ROCHESTER THE WATER - POWER CITY 1812-1854

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KANSAS CITY, MO. PUBLIC LIBRARY

ROCHESTER PUBLIC LIBRARY
KATE GLEASON FUND PUBLICATIONS

Kate Gleason (1865-1933) by will endowed the History Divi
sion of the Rochester Public Library as a memorial for
Amelia Brettelle, her teacher of history in the public schools.
To expand the usefulness of the bequest even beyond gather
ing historical records, and to encourage a forward look through
the past, part of the trust provides for the Kate Gleason Fund
Publications.

PUBLICATION ONE

Rochester The Water-Power City
1812-1854

LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

I COLONEL NATHANIEL ROCHESTER AT THE AGE OF SEVENTY

ROCHESTER PUBLIC LIBRARY, KATE GLEASON FUND PUBLICATIONS

ROCHESTER

H THE

WATER-POWER CITY

1812-1854

BY

BLAKE McKELVEY

Assistant City Historian, Rochester, New "York

HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Cambridge, Massachusetts

1945

COPYRIGHT 1945

COPYRIGHT 1945
BY THE PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

PREFACE

THIS HISTORY of Rochester represents a remarkable municipal achieve
ment. Under the laws of the state of New York, the towns and cities of
this state are required to appoint town or city historians. The city of
Rochester long ago met this requirement; the appointee to this office
and the persons whom he selects to assist him in his duties are paid
from municipal funds, which form a part of the budget of the Rochester
Public Library; the City Historian and the Assistant City Historian
are civil servants, with tenure similar to that of other civil servants
under the civil service laws. They are free to pursue their work in the
true scholarly spirit, and they have met at all times with the most cordial
support of the public authorities. The present volume represents if not
a unique, at any rate a most striking, achievement, the preparation of a
history of an important American city on the basis of careful research,
exact scholarship, and expert judgment all provided for by municipal
funds. It was undertaken by Dr. McKelvey when he first assumed his
post as Assistant City Historian; it has been pushed forward in the midst
of other duties; and its completion is a notable landmark in the history
of American historical writing.

Yet more than this can be said. Not only the preparation, but also
the publication, of the work is a municipal enterprise. An eminent
citizen of Rochester, Miss Kate Gleason, left some years ago a fund in
memory of her teacher of history, Miss Amelia Brettelle, to be used for
the establishment of a department of history in the Rochester Public
Library. With the gracious encouragement of members of her family,
and with the legal approval of the proper municipal authorities, the
Surrogate s Court, the Corporation Counsel, and the City Council, the
use of a portion of this fund was made possible in connection with the
expenses of publication. Miss Gleason was herself one of the most
devoted friends of her native city; and it seems peculiarly appropriate
that she should thus have a part in a permanent record of its early years.

I am glad to pay tribute here to the industry, good judgment, and
wide knowledge which Dr. McKelvey has brought to the completion of
the manuscript. He has made the story not only interesting in itself,
but also a part of the larger story of American history in general; he
has, with remarkable insight and assiduity, recreated the life of the
city in its formative period, and maintained the broad perspective

vi PREFACE

which is essential to an understanding of the story. His book deserves
to be read not only by those who are interested in Rochester, but also
by those who are interested in the growth of urban living in America.
Throughout the execution of this task, the City Historian s office
owes much to the cordial collaboration and support which it has always
received from the Director of the Rochester Public Library, Dr. John
A. Lowe. He has, from the outset, encouraged and believed in the
scholarly function which that office ought to perform; and he has done
much to make its performance possible.

DEXTER PERKINS
City Historian

AUTHOR S FOREWORD

ROCHESTER S DEVELOPMENT athwart the major east-west population
and trade highway of the second quarter of the nineteenth century
not only accounts for many of its features but also links the local story
with main trends in American history. Analysis of the forces playing
within the evolving urban scene at the Genesee falls affords distinctive
rewards, both to the student of social history and to the citizen in
terested in his local heritage, for within the space of a short half-
century a neglected backwoods site was transformed into a thriving
industrial city which ranked seventeenth in size in the nation at the
mid-century and had already attained a measure of cultural self-
sufficiency. The peculiar influence of its falls site, the advantages and
limitations of its valley hinterland, as well as those of its first great
trade artery, the Erie Canal, the flood of Americans surging westward,
swollen toward the end of the period by a fresh stream of immigrants,
the sweep of religious wildfire these and many other factors condi
tioned the community s development and add interest to its story.

Fortunately, the unprecedented rapidity of its early growth stimu
lated sufficient interest in the town s history to prompt a versatile
editor and politician, Henry O Reilly, to write the lengthy and cred
itable Sketches of Rochester, published at Rochester early in 1838.
This pioneer city historian depicted Rochester as sailing down the main
stream of American life, an interpretation shared by Mrs. Basil Hall,
who found the Genesee mill town of 1827 "the best place we have yet
seen for giving strangers an idea of the newness of this country."
Alexander MacKay, another British visitor (who studied law for a time
in the office of a local judge), declared near the mid-century, "There is
no other town in America the history of which better illustrates the
rapid progress of material and moral civilization in the United States
than that of the city of Rochester." Whether correct or not, these
opinions animated a long succession of collectors and chroniclers whose
labors have been of invaluable assistance to the present historian.

These fairly abundant materials have facilitated a selective treatment
of the subject. The object has been to use only those details, events,
and personalities which help to fill in the essential features of the com
munity pattern and to move the story along. An effort has been made
to keep both the chronology and the setting clearly in mind in the treat-

viii AUTHOR S FOREWORD

ment of each event and to depict action where possible in terms of
familiar residents or recognizable groups. Many important personalities
have no doubt been neglected, as it would be impossible even to number
all who contributed to the city s development. Yet the role of the
individual was much more important in the Water-Power City than
in its industrial and institutionalized successor, prompting an effort
here to recount enough of the activities of a limited number of Roches-
terians to give the city s story some of its proper human flavor. Not
only the life-span of many of the pioneer villagers, but the primary
community trends, as well as the changing national environment, helped
to terminate the city s first growth cycle in the mid-fifties, facilitating
its study in one volume as the "Water-Power City."

Within the larger unity of the Water-Power City s development,
five successive stages appeared. Thus it was on a retarded frontier,
surrounded by deep forests, penetrated only by rough roads and haz
ardous waterways, that the village was born in 1812. It was a hamlet
of small, boarded shacks, warmed by crude fireplaces, clustering around
a couple of primitive lumber and grist mills, which became, in the
decade following its incorporation in 1817, America s first boom town.
It was a town of freshly painted white houses, sprawling astride a river
whose falls turned a hundred rumbling millstones, which fed the long
rows of canal boats that glided slowly across an impressive stone aque
duct bearing the products of a fertile valley toward eastern markets*
It was the bustling residents of the emerging Flour City who worried
about the recurrent fires, the occasional plagues, and the uncertain
market; who complained of muddy streets, poor water, and an ineffi
cient police; who debated conflicting religious doctrines, sought im
proved educational facilities, and expressed themselves in boisterous
political campaigns, crude rollicking amusements, and violent journalis
tic blasts. It was the children of these residents who, with newcomers
from the East and from across the Atlantic, brought about recovery
from the first major depression by developing fresh fields of enterprise,
adjusted themselves to a more sober rate of growth as well as a more
respectable code of mores, and finally settled down at the raid-century
amidst the larger opportunities and more complex problems of the
developing Flower City.

Rochester BLAKE

June i, 1944

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

MY FIRST OBLIGATION is to the citizens of Rochester whose interest in
the community s history has fostered this study. Perhaps the attention
given to local traditions more than a century ago, when Rochesterians
could still remember their early boom days, has itself grown into a fond
tradition. At all events the invitation received just eight years ago to
study and write Rochester s history opened a most agreeable assignment,
and I must express my gratitude for the hearty welcome and the gen
erous opportunity for independent study thus afforded.

Continued residence in a city such as Rochester inevitably breaks
down some of the detachment which a scholar desires to maintain
toward his subject. Nevertheless, thanks to my upbringing in consecu
tive Methodist parsonages in central Pennsylvania, I early enjoyed a
fairly intimate living acquaintance with a half-dozen towns and cities
ranging from a small village the size of Rochester in the early iSao s
up through all the successive stages under study an experience of
great assistance in the effort to visualize the community s growth. To
the background for comparison thus provided, later pursuit of local
history in Pennsylvania and of urban history in Chicago have added
perspective for the study of Rochester. Much to be desired, however,
is the familiar and understanding view generally denied to the stranger.
I am therefore especially grateful for the cordial associations enjoyed
with members of the Rochester Historical Society and other organiza
tions whose roots reach into the city s past, for to some extent these
friends have relieved me of the handicaps of the outlander.

I am, of course, heavily indebted to a long list of collectors and com
pilers who labored to amass the records upon which this account has
been in considerable part constructed. Starting more than a century ago
with Henry O Reilly, the work of assembling and preserving documents
was continued by such men as George H, Harris, Howard L. Osgood,
William H. Samson, and Edward R. Foreman, to mention but a few.
Several choice files of letter and other documents in the Rochester,
Scrantom, Reynolds, Weed, O Reilly, Selye, Clarke, and Schermerhorn
collections, as well as many smaller in volume, have supplied intimate
details, revealing much of the character of Rochester during successive
eras.

I have enjoyed convenient access to most of these materials, housed

x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

today in the Local History Division of the Rochester Public Library.
The resources of the Division have been enriched by the deposit there
of the bibliographic materials gathered during the past half-century by
the Rochester Historical Society and the Reynolds Library. Special
thanks are due to my associates on the Public Library staff, Miss Emma ,
B. Swift, Mr. J. Gormly Miller (now on leave in the armed services),
and others who have patiently assisted in the progress of this study.

Generous aid has been received from those in charge of the local
history archives at the University of Rochester, the Wood Library at
Canandaigua, and the Ontario County Historical Society library at the
same place. Mr. R. W. G. Vail and Miss Edna L. Jacobsen of the
New York State Library, the late Mr. Alexander J. Wall of the New
York Historical Society in New York, and Mr. Robert W. Bingham
of the Buffalo Historical Society have provided valuable assistance, and
a very special service was rendered by Dr. Philip Bauer of the National
Archives in procuring photostatic copies of manuscripts in private hands
in Washington. Numerous individuals have kindly shown me rare manu
scripts in their possession, and several extensive private collections have
been opened to my inspection, notably that of Mr. George Skivington,
containing among other items a voluminous file of Greig papers, that of
Mrs. Buell Mills comprising the papers of Freeman Clarke, the Eli sa-
beth Selden Spencer Eaton letters of Mrs. Elizabeth Selden Rogers in
New York City, and the Schermerhorn collection in possession of Mrs.
Rudolph Stanley-Brown, Washington, D. C.

I have profited considerably from unpublished studies conducted at
the University of Rochester and elsewhere in various aspects of Roches
ter s history. These are referred to in the appropriate connections below,
but I must mention here especially the master s thesis of Mr. Whitney
Cross, now archivist at Cornell University, the master s thesis of Mr.
Earl Weller, now Director of the Rochester Bureau of Municipal Re
search, and the doctor s thesis at Harvard University of Dr. Donald W.
Gilbert, now Dean of Graduate Studies and Professor of Economics at
the University of Rochester. The careful, intensive work of these and
other students has greatly assisted my efforts to cover the whole range
of the community s history down through 1854, Possibly my heaviest
indebtedness in this respect is to the members of the National Youth
Administration project who prepared an excellent index of the Rochester
papers from the first issues to far beyond the period studied.

Many kind friends have assisted with suggestions and criticism,
although, of course, responsibility for the final product must rest on
my own shoulders. Professor Dexter Perkins as City Historian and
Dr. John A. Lowe as Public Librarian have been in touch with this
study from its inception and have provided much encouragement. Pro
fessor Perkins, Dr. Aaron Abell of Nazareth College in Rochester, and

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi

Professor A. M. Schlesinger of Harvard University have each read the
entire manuscript and proffered constructive criticisms. I am especially
grateful to Professor Schlesinger not only for his careful perusal of this
manuscript but also for his thoughtful mentorship over a period of
several years in the broader study of urban history. Dr. Arthur C.
Parker, Dr. Glyndon Van Deusen, Dr. Bert J. Loewenberg, Dr. Rolf
King, Dr. William A. Ritchie, Mr. Arthur Bestor, Jr., and Mr. Arthur
Pound have each read special portions of the manuscript and contrib
uted valuable suggestions. Aid has been given from time to time by
Mr. Alexander M. Stewart, a specialist in the French period, Mr.
Morley Turpin and Major Wheeler Case, steeped in the lore of the
pioneers, and Mr. Walter Cassebeer, careful student of local architec
ture. Much more than secretarial assistance has been rendered at varied
stages of this project by Miss Annie H. Croughton, Miss Harriett Julia
Naylor, Miss Ruth Marsh, and especially Miss Dorothy S. Truesdale,
whose painstaking work, including frequent checking of documents, has
helped not only to eliminate disturbing errors but also to fill in spacious
gaps in the story. The index has been prepared in large part by Miss
Jean Dinse, to whom I am duly grateful. To my wife, Jean Trepp, I
owe sincere gratitude for much patient forebearance, many repetitious
auditions, and unfailingly tactful criticism during the several years of
the study s progress.

-<

A word or two should be added in regard tg my sources. The inclu
sion of a bibliography seems unnecessary in view of the full character of
the footnotes. Perhaps many of the notes are much too full, but it has
seemed wise, where a development can best be traced through scattered
newspaper accounts, to supply a full list, although the incident to which
the citation is attached may be described specifically in only one or two
references. Readers who are interested in an over-all view of the area s
historical literature are referred to the author s "A History of Historical
Writing in the Rochester Area/ Rochester History, April, 1944.

CONTENTS

I. GEOLOGIC AND HUMAN BACKGROUND 3

Nature Carves a Choice Urban Site. Local Antiquities and Clashing
Empires. The Occupation of the Genesee Frontier. Pioneer ways
Partially Outgrown.

II. THE LOWER GENESEE SETTLEMENTS: 1808-1815 ... 29
A Bridgehead, a Mill Town, or a Lake Port. Colonel Rochester s
Settlement. The Hazards of War.

III. THE ESTABLISHMENT OF ROCHESTERVILLE: 1815-1818 . 49

Peaceful Growth on the Lower Genesee. The Incorporation of
Rochesterville. The Canal Assures Leadership to Rochester.

IV. THE BOOM TOWN: 1818-1828: POPULATION AND ECONOMIC
GROWTH 7i

The Struggle for Independence. The Market Town on the Genesee.
The Canal Brings a Boom. America s First Boom Town.

V. ORGANIZATION OF THE BOOM TOWN: 1817-1828 . . .108
Early Civic Problems and Regulations. Rudiments of Culture. De
nominational Rivalries.

VI. SOCIAL AND POLITICAL UPHEAVAL: 1818-1829 .... 136
Village Folkways in Transition. Rampant Political Journalism.

VII. CREATING A CITY: 1829-1834 163

Way Station for Westward Migrants. The Hesitant Assumption of
Urban Responsibilities. Religious Revivals and Repercussions.

VIII. FLOUR CITY: PROSPERITY AND ADVERSITY: 1834-1850 . . 205
Years of Growth: 1834-1837. Years of Adversity: 1837-1843. The
Uphill Road to Recovery: 1840-1850.

IX. CIVIC AND INSTITUTIONAL AFFAIRS: 1834-1850 . . .242
Toward Civic Complacency. Divided Responsibility. Public and
Private Educational Advances.

X. SOCIAL AND CULTURAL EXPRESSION: 1834-1850 . . .276
Religious and Humanitarian Trends. Domestic and Social Life.
Political and Journalistic Achievements.

XI. TOWARD URBAN MATURITY: 1850-1854 322

Economic Turning Points. Civic Perplexities. Social and Cultural
Maturity.

INDEX 367

ILLUSTRATIONS

I. Colonel Nathaniel Rochester at the age of seventy, portrait by Horace
Harding, 1822. Courtesy of the Rochester Historical Society Frontispiece

II. The Main Falls of the Genesee, viewed from, the northeast, by Captain

Thomas Davies, about 1760. Courtesy of the University of Rochester 48

III. The Main Falls, viewed from the northwest in 1816, by Charles A.
Lesueur. Reproduced from Dessins de Charles A. Lesueur executis

aux Etats-Unis de 1816 a 1837 (Paris, 1935) 49

IV. i. James Geddes survey map of the proposed canal east of the
Genesee, 1809. Extract reproduced from Laws in Relation to the Erie

and Champlain Canals, I, f. 38 .80

2. Rochester in 1815, as shown in the Field Notes of Lemuel Foster,
surveyor of the Rochester end of the proposed road to Batavia. Cour
tesy of the Rochester Historical Society 80

V. i. View of the Main Falls and Village, 1830. Reproduced from an

engraving in the Gem (Rochester, Nov. 13, 1830) 81

2. View of the First Aqueduct from the east. Reproduced from Cad-
wallader Golden, Memoir . . . of the New York Canals (New York,
1825), f. p. 291 81

VI. i. Enos Stone: Pioneer landowner on the east bank. Courtesy of the

Rochester Historical Society 144

2. Hamlet Scrantom: Pioneer resident in the village. Courtesy of the
Rochester Historical Society 144

3. Abelard Reynolds: Postmaster, owner of Reynolds Arcade. Cour
tesy of the Rochester Historical Society 144

4. Dr. Levi Ward: Patron of cultural enterprises. Courtesy of the
Rochester Historical Society 144

VII. The Courthouse Square at Rochester: Basil Hall s "camera lucida"
sketch of 1827. Reproduced from Hall s Forty Etchings (Edinburgh,
1829) 145

VIII. Map of Monroe County, created in 1821. This map was prepared be
fore final determination of the southern boundary of Rush . following 160

IX. i. Jonathan Child: Merchant, temperance advocate, first mayor.

Courtesy of the Rochester Historical Society 176

2. Reverend Joseph Penney: Presbyterian pastor. Courtesy of the
First Presbyterian Church 176

3. Everard Peck: Publisher, church leader, university trustee . .176

4. Henry O Reilly: Editor, politician, humanitarian . . . .176

xvi ILLUSTRATIONS

X. i. Dr. Chester Dewey: Educator and scientist 177

2. Judge Samuel Lee Selden: Jurist and promoter . . . .177

3. Lewis H. Morgan: Father of American anthropology . . .177

4. Frederick Douglass: Negro publisher and lecturer . . . .177

XL Interior view of Reynolds Arcade, 1851. Reproduced from "The Agri
cultural Society Fair," Illustrated American News, Supplement (1851) 240

XII. Banquet scene in Corinthian Hall, 1851, Illustrated American News,

Supplement (1851) 241

XIII. Three advertisements from the Directory of 1851-52 .... 256

XIV. Rochester from the west, 1853. Reproduced from a lithograph made
by D. W. Moody from a drawing by J. W. Hill Courtesy of the
University of Rochester 272

XV. View of Rochester from Mt. Hope, 1854. Reproduced from an en
graving by Felch, who followed with some modifications an 1849
drawing by E. Whitefield, Courtesy of the University of Rochester 273

XVI. Map of Rochester, 1851, surveyed and drawn by Marcus Smith and
B. Callan. Reproduced from a rare wall map. Courtesy of the
Rochester Historical Society 320

ROCHESTER

THE WATER-POWER CITY

1812-1854

CHAPTER I
GEOLOGIC AND HUMAN BACKGROUNDS

IF EVER a town s site was prepared and its character largely deter
mined by the varied actions of an ever-abundant water supply, it
was the Rochester of a hundred years ago. So well was this site
designed for a milling and trading center that in 1812, when permanent
settlers arrived in the wake of the first great wave of westward migra
tion across New York State, few traces of earlier habitation remained.
Neither the successive Indian invasions nor the pioneer farmers who
eventually displaced them found the lower Genesee the ideal spot for
settlement. Yet the character of the city which ultimately developed,
predetermined in many respects by the waterfalls, was considerably
influenced as well by its human antecedents influenced negatively by
the absence of previous local achievements, and positively as the lore
of earlier days stirred the imagination of numerous residents. The fasci
nating evidences of the city s geologic foundations and the pageantry of
the valley s human background still prompt Rochesterians to seek the
roots of their history in the hazy antiquities of the beautiful Genesee
Country.

NATURE CARVES A CHOICE URBAN SITE X

It was approximately two hundred million years ago, near the end of
the Paleozoic Era, the third great interval of geologic time, that the
Genesee region emerged from the retreating sea waters which had long
covered much of what is now the eastern part of the United States.
A deep covering of rock strata had been slowly built up, layer upon
layer, over the igneous or volcanic rock base. 2 Thus elevated, the Genesee

1 This summary account is based on the researches of Professor Herman LeRoy
Fairchild, whose many excellent articles have been well summarized with profuse
illustrations in his Geologic Story of the Genesee Valley and Western New York
(Rochester, 1928). Thomas G. Payne, The Genesee Country: A Field Guide to
Various Natural Features which Reveal the Geologic Past (Rochester Museum of
Arts and Sciences, Guide Bulletin, No. 5, Rochester, 1938), presents a more recent
comprehensive survey of the subject and provides an excellent geologic map of
the Genesee region. See also Chris A, Hartnagel, "Before the Coming of Man,"
Alexander C. Flick, ed., History of the State of New York (New York, 1933-37),
I, 28-39.

2 Charles S. Prosser, "The Thickness of the Devonian and Silurian Rocks . . .
along the . . . Line of the Genesee River," Proceedings of the Rochester Academy

4 THE WATER-POWER CITY

region stood exposed during the one hundred million years of the
Mesozoic, or fourth, geologic era, permitting the untiring forces of
nature gradually to disintegrate the upper strata and transport the par
ticles in shifting streams down the "Ontario/ Ohio, and Susquehanna
valleys, until a great plain was formed practically at sea level. A lux
uriant foliage of sub-tropical verdure spread over this region, and the
first mammals appeared.

The great continental uplift at the beginning of the Cenozoic or last
geologic era elevated the plain to form the Appalachian plateau, thus
starting anew the erosional cycle. In due time the first Genesee River
formed, modeling for itself a comfortable rolling valley in which to
meander sluggishly northward through the course of present Irondequoit
Bay toward the westward flowing Ontarian River. A warm climate nur
tured a rich vegetation not greatly different from that of today.

The scene changed radically when, approximately half a million
years ago, a climatic shift started the formation of the great ice sheet
which spread out in a southwesterly direction from the Labrador region.
The advance of the glacier continued until it had pushed beyond the
southern border of New York State. Many thousand years later during
the glacier s slow retreat, when numerous and significant transforma
tions were being made in the old Genesee Valley, the site for the city
of Rochester was finally carved out.

A succession of twenty glacial lakes formed between the southern
highlands and the retreating ice dam. The thick sedimentary deposits
spread over these temporary lake beds (composed of silt gathered by
highland streams from the south, till brought by the glacier from the
north, and the rich limestone particles scraped up from the broad
dolomite outcrop that stretched across the northern portion of the state)
provided the Genesee Country with the basis for its proverbial fer
tility, 8 its wealth of clay, sand, gravel, and peat deposits. 4

Among the more prominent landmarks left by the retreating ice mass
were the smooth, oval-shaped, clay blisters formed under the melting
ice sheet the curious ridges which are scattered across southern Monroe
County and eastward towards Syracuse, the world s most remarkable
drumlin formation. On Rochester s immediate southern border appears
another striking glacial remain the string of pinnacle-shaped hills,

of Science, II (1892), 49-104. Prosser reviews in detail the findings taken from
the many deep wells drilled in the valley from time to time.

3 "Soil Survey of Monroe County, New York," U. S. Dept. of Agriculture,
Bulletin, Series 1933, No. 17 (Washington, D. C., 1938) ; see also similar surveys
for Livingston County in 1908, Ontario County in 1910, Steuben County in 1931,
and Wayne County in 1902.

4 Clifton J. Sarle, "Economic Geology of Monroe County and Contiguous Ter
ritory," New York State Museum $6th Annual Report: 1002 (Albany, 1904), pp.
r 75-r 106.

GEOLOGIC AND HUMAN BACKGROUNDS 5

known as kames, formed at the points where numerous glacial summer
streams emptied into the pent-up Lake Dawson during a long period
when the balance between sun and snow stranded the glacier s southern
edge over the site of Rochester. The waters of Lake Dawson found a
shallow but broad outlet eastward past the site of Fairport and Newark
towards Montezuma, whence they flowed more swiftly to a junction
with the Mohawk Valley thus channelling a course later followed by
the Erie Canal When the retreat of the Syracuse lobe of the glacier
opened a lower outlet through the Oswego and Mohawk valleys, the
waters of Lake Dawson escaped, and a new level was found in Lake
Iroquois, the last of the great glacial lakes.

At varied intervals during its retreat the glacier dropped sufficient
deposits to block the pre-glacial drainage valleys* notably at Portage-
ville and at Rush, compelling the Genesee at each of these points to
carve new post-glacial channels. The diversion at Rush forced the
cutting of the lower Genesee gorge by a succession of waterfalls, des
tined finally to play a significant role in the growth of the city. This
great carving operation started during the period when Lake Iroquois
covered the northern portion of the site of Rochester. After plunging
over the hard ledge of dolomitic limestone (known today as the Lock-
port Escarpment or Big Ridge which extends east and west as a resistant
outcrop and forms the cap rock for the great Niagara cataract), the
Genesee spread out over a broad delta dropping the rich deposits which
form the loose soil of Greece and Irondequoit. At the same time a long
east-west sandbar formed a half mile or so off shore, the Little Ridge
which later attracted so much admiration and speculation from the
travelers along the Ridge Road.

The further disintegration of the great ice dam finally permitted the
escape of part of the waters of Lake Iroquois through the St. Lawrence
channel, then depressed below sea level, thus creating an elongated
Gilbert Gulf which reached into a portion of the bed of present Lake
Ontario. The Genesee was forced to extend its channel through its old
delta and to cut a new gorge in the formerly submerged rock strata.
A second great falls began this carving process some distance north of
the present lake shore, cutting fairly rapidly back through the soft shale
and sandstone strata, digging a deep chasm and slowly gaining on the
first cataract which was only with difficulty eating its way s6uthward
through the Lockport ledge. In the task of digging out this 2OO-foot
thick ledge of dolomite limestone the upper layers were in time stripped
back, forming the series of low cataracts, for many years described as
the upper falls, a half mile south of the main falls. The division of the
lower falls into two successive cascades was caused by the presence of
two resistant layers of rock, the upper one some twenty feet above
the lower.

6 THE WATER-POWER CITY

The progressive disintegration of the glacier had meanwhile removed
the great weight depressing the land mass of Lower Canada, and a
slanting uplift occurred^ just sufficient to entrap a portion of the old
Ontarian Valley and form, Lake Ontario, which finally assumed its
present boundaries approximately ten thousand years ago. As the great
lake slowly filled, its waters crept up the deep Genesee gorge to the
foot of the lower falls and invaded the parallel old Genesee Valley to
form Irondequoit Bay. Surface erosion on the old delta cut the many
gullies which now add charm to Durand-Eastman Park, while the river
slowly deposited its burden of silt in the submerged gorge until an ideal
shipping channel was seriously clogged. The slanting uplift which cre
ated Lake Ontario served as well to bottle up several fresh water reser
voirs on the streams south of Rochester and sufficiently dammed the
shallow Genesee to make the river navigable for fifty miles south of
the upper rapids at Rochester.

The slight tilting of the rock strata likewise obstructed the northward
drainage of the lands east and west of the river. The outcropping ledges
forced the streams to seek an east or west course, following in some
places the channels of earlier glacial rivers, thus providing ideal canoe
trails for the Iroquois and early white traders and opening natural
routes for the cross-state canals, railroads, and highways of a later day.
In many places deposits of glacial drift blocked these streams, forming
vast swamp areas, though gradually in the course of centuries most of
the swamps were filled in by vegetation advancing in successive soil-
building stages: 6 The triumph of the forest invasion was widespread,
but occasional peat bogs endured long enough to entrap specimens of
man s huge predecessors, the mastodons. A sycamore swamp and salt
lick remained to fringe the western limits of man s first settlement at
the Genesee falls, contributing a health hazard which was only in part
offset by the abundant water supply thus assured. A heavy primitive
forest of "maple, beach, ash, oak, elm, basswood, hickory, chestnut,
cherry, pine, poplar, butternut, black walnut and sycamore" 7 covered
most of the site of present Rochester, while a thick pine grove spread
over adjoining Irondequoit, providing fuel and lumber for the early

5 Paul A. Stewart and William D. Merrell, "The Bergen Swamp: An Ecological
Study," Proceedings of the Rochester Academy of Science, VIII (1937), 209-262.

6 C. A. Hartnagel and S. C. Bishop, "The Mastodons, Mammoths, and Other
Pleistocene Mammals of New York State," New York State Museum Bulletin
(Jan.-Feb., 1921), pp. 34-39. Five separate mastodon remains have been un
covered and fairly reliably identified within the area of Monroe County since 1830.
The most notable find was the nine-foot tusk dug up by Genesee Valley Canal
workmen at the corner of Plymouth and Caledonia Avenues in 1837,

7 Florence Beckwith and Mary E. Macauley, "Plants of Monroe County, New
York, and Adjacent Territory," Proceedings of the Rochester Academy of Science,
III (1894), 13-

GEOLOGIC AND HUMAN BACKGROUNDS ^

villagers. And when eventually the log and frame structures were out
grown, a supply of limestone was available a few feet under ground,
either as a solid foundation for the taller buildings, or as the rough
building materials used in the early mills and other stone structures. 8
Scarcely could a more fortunate combination of natural advantages
have been assembled had an All-wise Providence set itself the task of
preparing a site for Rochester! The moving force throughout these
successive geologic ages had been the area s abundant water supply,
operating in varied forms and manifold ways, and it was more than
fitting that the chief dynamic force available on man s arrival should
be the water power of the several Genesee falls. But the experience of
successive human invasions was to demonstrate that the site had been
so designed as to attract only an advanced commercial and industrial
settlement, such as the New England migrants of the early nineteenth
century were to build.

LOCAL ANTIQUITIES AND CLASHING EMPIRES

For a period of several thousand years primitive red men are sup
posed to have wandered about the Genesee Country, though few indi
cations of their activities remain in the Rochester area. Later waves of
more advanced Indian cultures swept over the region, and the first
Europeans made their appearance, playing minor roles in the widespread
struggles of contending empires, but the chief contribution made by
these varied peoples to Rochester s development proved to be the manner
in which their rival enterprises cancelled each other and thus postponed
stable beginnings.

Three generations of diligent archeologists have finally woven the
scant traces of local Indian occupation into a fascinating story. 9 A few
camp sites, found along the bluffs of the lower Genesee gorge and about

8 Herman LeRoy Fairchild and J. Foster Warner, "Building Stones of Roches
ter," Rochester Historical Society, Publications, XII, 133-138.

9 William A. Ritchie, The Pre-Iroquoian Occupation of New York State (Roches
ter: Rochester Museum of Arts and Sciences, 1943), presents a well correlated
account of the prehistory of the State, the product of many years of intensive
excavation work and careful laboratory study of early camp sites and collections.
Ritchie lists the contributions of most of his predecessors in local archeological re
search, but only three need mention here: Arthur C. Parker, whose "The First
Human Occupation of the Rochester Region," R. H, S., Pub., X, 19-48, is an ex
cellent summary article to which is appended a bibliography of Dr. Parker s numer
ous writings on this subject; George H. Harris, whose contribution of the first
fifteen chapters of William F. Peck s Semi-Centennial History of the City of
Rochester (Syracuse, 1884), pp. 11-96, represents only the first fruits of researches
which continued until Harris s death in 1893 (see his unpublished MSS at the
University of Rochester) ; and Lewis H. Morgan, whose League of the Iroquois
(Rochester, 1851) has been described as "the first scientific account of an Indian
tribe ever given to the world."

8 THE WATER-POWER CITY

Irondequoit Bay tell of hunting and fishing activities in this area by
the earliest-known Archaic peoples, whose successive cultures have been
pieced together with the aid of a host of bone, chipped or polished
stone, and copper implements recently excavated at larger stations dis
covered elsewhere in western and central New York. 10 Old local tradi
tions .of scattered mounds in the Irondequoit vicinity (unfortunately
explored before the development of techniques for the interpretation of
artifacts) have now been substantiated by the excavation of several
small burial mounds in the Genesee Valley and one near the mouth of
Irondequoit Bay. This invasion of Hopervellian "Mound Builders" and
kindred peoples from the Ohio area is marked by new handicraft
products, including pottery and pipes of clay and stone. 11 A later wave
of migrants, equipped with a Woodland culture, known as the Owasco,
left its distinctive pottery, pipes, bone tools, and stone hunting equip
ment at several small camp and village sites in the Genesee Valley and ,
along the shores of Manitou Ponds and Irondequoit Bay. The settle
ment on a knoll overlooking the Genesee on the present University of
Rochester River Campus may have belonged to this occupation, as did
the camp site more recently discovered during building operations on
Albermarle Street. 12

Still another Indian migration brought the Iroquois into this area
approximately a century and a half before the arrival of the first white
men. The Iroquois, who seem to have absorbed many of their Owasco
predecessors, from which culture they took over numerous elements, 13
had a virile, warlike character and developed an unusual talent for
organization. To their staunch tribal loyalties, a new tie was added
when five of the tribes scattered across New York State joined in the
famous League of the Iroquois, a defensive alliance designed to estab
lish peace and security throughout this region. The League encouraged
trade but likewise freed the home guard for more distant military
adventures, both activities being facilitated by the central geographic
position of these tribes and the excellent interior canoe routes of upper
New York State. The earliest knowledge of the Iroquois to reach the

10 Ritchie, Pre-Iroquoian Occupation, pp. 235-310.

11 Ritchie, Pre-Iroquoian Occupation, pp. 112-227; George H. Harris, "Ab
original History of Irondequoit/ newspaper clipping, Harris MSS, No. 8$, Roch.
Hist. Soc.

^George H. Harris MSS, Univ. of Rochester; William A. Ritchie, "Some Al-
gonkian and Iroquoian Camp Sites Around Rochester," N. Y. State Archeological
Association, Researches and Transactions, V, 3 (1927), pp. 43-49. Much larger
sites, explored during the past decade in the western and southern parts of the
State, demonstrate the sedentary nature of Owasco life in large fortified villages
where deep storage pits, still containing corn and beans preserved by charring,
have been excavated; see Ritchie, Pre-Iroquoian Occupation, pp. 29-102.

15 Ritchie, Pre-Iroquoian Occupation, pp. 26-29, 41-46-

GEOLOGIC AND HUMAN BACKGROUNDS g

first white men on the St. Lawrence and the Hudson was of their
aggressive warlike character, reports which came from the bitter rivals
of the League. 14

The Iroquois tribe which settled in the Genesee Country, known to
the white men as the Senecas, built its villages on the hilltops in the
neighborhood of the upper Genesee and on the highlands around the
western Finger Lakes. Although, in accordance with Indian custom,
new locations were chosen every decade or so, the Senecas in the course
of more than four hundred years in the valley apparently never estab
lished a village closer to the site of Rochester than that found by
La Salle fifteen miles south, at Totiakton (Rochester Junction) on
Honeoye Creek.- Nevertheless, the lower Genesee-Irondequoit area was
a favorite hunting preserve, with several well-marked trails connecting
traditional camp sites, such as that overlooking the Indian landing on
Irondequoit Bay, 15 where hunting, trading, and war parties frequently
stopped overnight.

<

Although the Senecas did not attempt to build in the Rochester area,
they were successful in keeping it free of permanent white occupation
for nearly two centuries after the first visitor, fitienne Brule, crossed
the upper Genesee in i6i5. 16 This region did, however, witness a share
of the strife of these crucial years when the Iroquois, the French, and
the English were vainly contending for dominance dominance not on
the battlefield alone, but in trade and religion as well. 17

So far-reaching was the power of the Iroquois at the mid-seventeenth
century 18 that the French sought to reach a workable understanding
with them. A group of zealous missionaries and venturesome traders
visited central New York in 1656 and again a decade later, erecting
bark chapels and surveying the possibilities for trade. Most of these
visitors came over the canoe routes from the east, seldom if ever reach-

14 George T. Hunt, The Wars of the Iroquois: A Study in Intertribal Trade Re
lations (Madison, 1940), pp. 13-37.

15 Memoranda on interviews with old settlers, Harris MSS, No. 182, 65 A, 78,
Roch. Hist. Soc.

16 George B. Selden, "tienne Brule": The First White Man in the Genesee
Country," R. H. S., Pub,, IV, 83-102. Brul6 spent a part of the next year as a
captive in a Seneca village, probably on the southern border of present Monroe
County.

17 The succession of able students who have labored in this field is a long one:
William M. Beauchamp of Albany, General John S. Clark and the Reverend
Charles Hawley of Cayuga, 0. H. Marshall and Frank H. Severance of Buffalo,
George H. Harris, William Samson, Nathaniel S. Olds, and Alexander M. Stewart
of Rochester. The most detailed and painstaking chronology of these events is
found in Mr. Stewart s "Early Catholic History in the Rochester Diocese," Catholic
Courier, supplement, Oct. 25, 1934.

18 Hunt, Wars of the Iroquois,

io THE WATER-POWER CITY

ing the Rochester area, but in the fall of 1656 Father Joseph Chaumonot
visited the Seneca village on Boughton Hill, and in 1668 the Jesuits
returned to established missions for a few years in four villages on the
southern border of Monroe County, that of Father Jacques Fremin at
Totiakton being their nearest approach to the site of Rochester. 19

The first European visitor to the lower Genesee-Irondequoit area
must have arrived between 1650 and 1655, if we may judge from the
improved detail respecting this region shown on the Sanson map of
the latter date. 20 The first recorded visit was that of Galinee and
La Salle in August, i669- 21 La Salle, endeavoring to open a trade route
into the interior, followed the Indian trail from Irondequoit south to
Totiakton and returned on two later occasions but failed to open a
route up the Genesee. An account of the last of these visits is preserved
in Hennepin s journal:

After some few Days, the Wind coming fair, Fathers Gabriel, Zenobe, and
I went on board the Brigantine, and in a short time arriv d in the River
[Irondequoit Creek] of the Tsonnontouans [Senecas], which runs into the
Lake Ontario, where we continu d several Days, our Men being very busie
in bartering their Commodities with the Natives, who flock d in great num
bers about *us to see our brigantine, which they admir d, and to exchange
their Skins for Knives, Guns, Powder and Shot, but especially for Brandy,
which they love above all things. In the meantime, we had built a small
Cabin of Barks of Trees about half a League in the Woods, to perform
Divine Service therein without interruption, and waited till all our Men
had done their Business. M. la Salle arriv d in a Canou about eight Days
after. 22

When these varied missionary and commercial overtures failed to
win the cooperation of the Iroquois, whose trade with Albany was then
becoming profitable, the authorities in New France adopted sterner
methods. Thus in July, 1687, Denonville s punitive expedition arrived
off Irondequoit Bay, where approximately three thousand French and
Indian allies landed on the beach. Narrowly escaping ambush on the

19 Stewart, "Early Catholic History"; N. S. Olds, "The Jesuits and Their Mis
sions in the Genesee Country," R. H. S., Pub., IV, 121-131; Charles Hawley,
"Early Chapters of Seneca History: 1656-1684," Cayuga County Historical Society,
Collections (Auburn, N. Y., 1884), III, 22-89.

20 Frank H. Severance, An Old Frontier of France (New York, 1917), I (Buffalo
Historical Society, Publications, XX), 6-7; part of Nicholas Sanson s map of 1656
is reprinted as Plate II (p. 396) in the fine collection of ten early maps of the
New York region appended to William M. Beauchamp s History of the New York
Iroquois (Albany, 1905). See also Plate 20-B in Charles 0. Paullin, Atlas of the
Historical Geography of the United States (New York, 1932).

21 Louis P. Kellogg, ed., "The Journey of Dollier and Galinee: 1669-1670,"
Early Narratives of the Northwest (New York, 1917), pp. 177-188.

^Father Louis Hennepin, A New Discovery of a Vast Country in America
(Reuben G. Thwaites edition, Chicago, 1903), p. 101.

GEOLOGIC AND HUMAN BACKGROUNDS n

march inland, the army succeeded in burning several bark villages and
destroyed many acres of corn at the cost of more French than Seneca
casualties. 23 Although the havoc wrought within those two weeks was
soon remedied by the Senecas, relations with the French were not re
paired for several years.

The British at Albany, secretly rejoicing over the results of the new
French policy, hastened, on the outbreak of war in Europe a year later,
to enlist the Iroquois in an attack on New France. 24 Albany fur traders
pressed their enterprises more vigorously, 25 and occasional scouts fol
lowed Wentworth Greenhalgh, who in 1677 had been the first to ride
horseback over the Indian trails into the Genesee Country. 26 For more
than a decade the British enjoyed an undisputed advantage in western
New York, yet by the turn of the century French missionaries and
traders were able to resume their visits. A Canadian, Louis Thomas de
Joncaire, long held captive by the Senecas, became, as an adopted
member of that tribe, the chief promoter of French interests. 27 Fleets
of canoes loaded with furs again made their way from Irondequoit or
Sodus Bays toward Quebec, while Seneca young men took an increasing
part in the traffic with tribes on the western lakes. 28 French sloops
appeared on Lake Ontario. 29 In 1702, Madame Cadillac and several
female associates, en route to join their husbands in the new post at
Detroit, were the first white women to pass the mouth of the Genesee. 30

The British and French rivalry in this area came to a head when
both factions attempted to establish a trading post at Irondequoit. The
French were the first to arrive, as the six Albany traders who visited
the bay in 1716 discovered. Five years later the British sent their
Indian interpreter, Laurence Clausen, with Captain Peter Schuyler and

28 Chevalier de Baugy, "Journal of the Expedition of Marquis de Denonville
against the Iroquois: 1687," tr. by Nathaniel S. Olds, R. H. S., Pub,, IX, 3-56;
Marquis de Denonville, Narrative of the Expedition . . . against the Senecas in
1687, tr. by 0. H, Marshall (New York, 1848) ; George B. Selden, "Expedition of
the Marquis de Denonville against the Seneca Indians: 1687," R- H. S., Pub., IV,
1-82.

24 New York Historical Society, Collections (1869), p. 393.

25 "Mr. [Cadwallader] Colden s Memoir on the Fur Trade," E. B. O Callaghan,
ed., Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York (Al
bany, 1853-58), V, 726-733; A. H. Buf&ngton, "The Policy of Albany and English
Westward Expansion," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, VIII, 327-366.

28 "Wentworth Greenhalgh s Journal of a Tour to the Indians of Western New
York," O Callaghan, ed., Documents Relative to the Colonial History qf New
York, III, 250-252.

27 Frank H. Severance, "The Story of Joncaire," Buffalo Hist. Soc., Pub. f IX,
83-219.

28 H. A. Innis, The Fur Trade in Canada (New Haven, 1930), pp, 50, 53, 85.
^Ernest Cruickshank, "Early Traders and Trade Routes in Ontario and the

West: 1760-1783," in William H. Samson Note Book, III, 113-131, Roch. Hist. Soc.
80 Severance, An Old Frontier, I, 198-200.

12 THE WATER-POWER CITY

a party of eight men to build an English trading post. 31 Apparently
neither venture had much importance, for the French decided to con
centrate their attention on a new fort at Niagara, while the British
attempted to do the same at Oswego. Laurence Clausen made frequent
visits to the Indian villages and spent the winter of 1737-38 among the
Senecas, negotiating the lease of a tract six hundred square miles in
area at Irondequoit, including the site of Rochester, in an attempt to
head off possible French claims. 32 An itinerant English smith, traveling
among the Seneca villages for extended periods during these years,
offered little competition to the resident smiths and visiting priests of
the French, whose more vigorous western policy, together with the
leadership of the younger Joncaires, won increasing support, particu
larly from the western Senecas on the upper Genesee. 88

The French, playing the more active role on the Niagara frontier
during the first half of the eighteenth century, wrote the journals that
provide the earliest descriptions of the Genesee falls. In spite of several
previous visits by Europeans to this area, no description of the falls 84
was published prior to 1 744, when Father Pierre de Charlevoix issued
his Histoire de la Nouvelle France, including an account of his visit
to North America in 1721. Charlevoix tells of an exploratory voyage
along the lake shore from Irondequoit Bay westward, made in May of
that year, but confesses that he did not enter the Genesee and did not
learn until later of its remarkable succession of cascades. 85 The descrip
tion he gives, received as he says from a trusted officer (Joncaire), 86 is
reasonably accurate and no doubt provided the information for Bellin s
Map of the Lakes of Canada, included in the same volume. Here the

81 Charles H. Mcllwain, ed, An Abridgment of the Indian Affairs . . . Trans
acted in the Colony of New York . . . by Peter Wraxall (Cambridge, 1915), pp.
113, 119-120, 138-139* 1445 N. Y. Hist. Soc., Coll (1869), pp. 482-487; O Cal-
laghan, Documents Relative to the Colonial History of New York, V, 632-633, 641-
642, 666.

82 New York Assembly Journal (1737), P- 705; Severance, An Old Frontier, I,
334-342. The deed has been located by Mr. Morley B. Turpin, until recently archi
vist of the University of Rochester Library, hi New York Colonial MSS at Albany,
endorsed "Land Papers/ 1 vol. 13, p. 91.

88 Severance, An Old Frontier, I, 303-332.

M A bare mention of the Genesee falls was attached as a note to Father
GalineVs map of 1670, where he reports, apparently from hearsay: "Here is a
cataract where there is good fishing for barbues." The map of Father Raffeix, pre
pared in 1688, shows a longer Genesee but does not indicate the location or other
wise mention the existence of any falls. See copies of these maps and a discussion
of their content in N. S. Olds, "From LaSalle to Indian Allan," R. H. S,, Pub.,
X, 65-73.

36 Pierre de Charlevoix, Journal d un Voyage . . . dans L Amiriqut Septen-
tfiannale, Histoire de la Nouvelle France (Paris, 1744), V, 330-331.

86 Samson Note Book, VI, 175. William Samson gives George Harris credit for
this identification.

GEOLOGIC AND HUMAN BACKGROUNDS 13

river is named the "Casconchihagon" and is described as "a river un
known to geographers, full of falls and rapids." 37

Seven years later Father Francois Picquet found time during a mis
sionary journey along the lake shore to visit the falls. After his Indian
companions had killed forty-two rattlesnakes discovered at the foot of
the lower falls, the good Father made the pioneer first-hand observa
tions as recorded in the Lettres Edifiantes et Curieuses (later abridged
and translated by O Callaghan) :

The first [falls] which appear in sight in ascending [the Genesee] resemble
much the great Cascade at Saint Cloud, except that they have not been
ornamented and do not seem so high, but they possess natural beauties which
render them very curious. The second, a quarter of a mile higher, are less
considerable, yet are remarkable. The third, also a quarter of a league higher,
has beauties truly admirable by its curtains and falls which form also, as at
Niagara, a charming proportion and variety. They may be one hundred and
some feet high. In the intervals between the falls, there are a hundred little
cascades which present likewise a curious spectacle; and if the altitude of
each chute were joined together and they made but one as at Niagara, the
height would, perhaps, be four hundred feet; but there is four times less
water than at the Niagara Fall which will cause the latter to pass, forever, as
a Wonder perhaps unique in tfce World. 38

As the British were destined to triumph in their far-flung struggles
with the French, it was fitting that the first sketches of the Genesee
falls should be made by one of their officers, Captain T. Davies of the
Royal Regiment of Artillery. 39 It is probable, but not certain, that
Davies accompanied the Prideaux- Johnson expedition which effected

37 Charlevoix, Journal d un Voyage, V, 409. An excellent account of the early
maps descriptive of this area may be found in Severance, An Old Frontier, I, 6~io.

88 E. B. O Callaghan, ed., Documentary History of the State of New York
(Albany, 1850) , I, 284. Varied measurements are given for the Genesee falls. Henry
O Reilly, Settlement of the West: Sketches of Rochester, with Incidental Notices
of Western New York (Rochester, 1838), p. 89, gave the measurements of the
lowermost falls as 84 feet, the next as 25 feet, and the main falls as 96 feet. The
U. S. Geological Survey maps of 1931 show the distances between the water level
at the respective dams as 97 feet for the lower, 42 feet for the next, and 90 feet
for the upper, while the Rochester Gas and Electric Company measures its water
heads as 94 feet, 28 + I S> & n d 92 feet respectively. The volume of water is like
wise variously measured, but the Surface Water Survey made by the U. S. Depart
ment of the Interior in 1939 gives an average discharge of 2,655 cubic feet per
second below the lower Genesee falls, as against 190,800 for the Niagara River at
Buffalo, which makes Father Picquet s comparison appear far fetched, though no
doubt the Genesee flow has decreased more than has the Niagara in the intervening
two centuries.

89 E. R. Foreman, "Casconchiagon: The Great River," R. H. S., Pub., V, 140-
146, where the sketches were reproduced for the first time. See also George Moss s
note on Davies, Pub. of the R. H. S. (1892), p. 55. See Plate II, No. i.

14 THE WATER-POWER CITY

the capture of Fort Niagara in I7SQ. 40 The unlucky French commandant,
Captain Francois Pouchot, unable to believe that the cause of New
France was lost, returned to Europe to write, in his Memoir Upon the
Late War in North America, of the strategic importance of occupying
the Genesee Valley. 41 But the French never again enjoyed that prospect.

-

The triumph of the British did not immediately alter the situation
on the lower Genesee, The widespread Indian uprising of 1763, proving
that the tribes were still a force to be reckoned with, prompted the
British to woo their support and that of the French in Canada by a
tolerant observance of many old traditions. 42 Thus the fur trade, as well
as the administration of affairs in the western country, was centered in
Canada as before, while the Proclamation Line of 1763 clearly reserved
the Genesee Country together with most of trans-Appalachia as Indian
territory. To be sure, the Senecas and their Iroquois brothers no longer
held the balance of power between two great empires, and they missed
the powder, rum, and other supplies allowed them by rival commissaries
during the preceding half-century of intermittent warfare. 48 Neverthe
less, the westward migration, already thrusting against the tribes in the
more accessible Ohio Valley, did not as yet disturb the Senecas. The
population movement was, if anything, in the opposite direction as the
British sought the release of white captives from the Seneca villages,
though the small party of soldiers sent to Irondequoit for that purpose
in 1764 met with little success. 44 The Genesee Valley retained much of
its primitive forest life, amply meriting the Indian name Gen-nis-he-yo,
signifying beautiful valley. This the youthful captive, Mary Jemison,
found so agreeable that she was content to rear her part-Indian children
in native fashion, stubbornly refusing to leave her Genesee bottom
lands near Gardeau 45

40 Sir William Johnson Papers, III, 49-50, 61, 63; R. H. S., Pub., IX, 187-191.
The army of more than 2000 soldiers, not counting several hundred Indians,
pitched camp at Irondequoit on July 2nd, remaining until the 4th in order to
cook a supply of provisions and for other purposes. A Royal Regiment of Artillery
accompanied the expedition and was stationed at Niagara for several years there
after. Severance, An Old Frontier, II, 276, 281-282.

41 Capt. [Francois] Pouchot, Memoir Upon the Late War in North America
. . . 1755-1760, 3 vols. (Paris, 1781), tr. by F. B. Hough, a vols. (Roxbury, Mass.,
1866).

^Clarence W. Alvord, Mississippi Vattey in British Politics (Cleveland, 1917),
I, 170-171, 216-228.

^O Reilly, Sketches of Rochester, pp. 353-354 ; Alvord, The Mississippi Valley,
I, 185-187.

** George H. Harris, "The Markhams of Rush," Livingston County Historical
Society, Pub. (1916), pp. 51-61. William Markham, whose son later settled as a
pioneer on the Genesee, was one of the members of this 1764 expedition.

45 James E. Seaver, Mary Jemison, edited with commentary by Charles D. Vail
(New York, 1925), pp. 58-62, 92-93, 369.

GEOLOGIC AND HUMAN BACKGROUNDS 15

Even the Revolutionary War did not immediately affect the lower
Genesee although its outcome was to have far-reaching consequences
for the area. The Senecas and the scattered Indian agents in this region
were naturally loyal to the Crown. 46 Indeed, as the Revolution was, at
least in part, a result of the conflict between the settlers frontier and
that of the Indian and fur trader, it did not require much urging to stir
up a fight between the Indians and the settlers. Raiding parties, organ
ized by the Tories and Indians at Niagara, occasionally stopped at
John Butler s encampment near the Genesee falls en route to Kanade-
saga (Geneva) or to the upper Genesee, from which points they could
more easily ravage the frontier settlements of the Mohawk and Susque-
hanna Valleys. 47 In reply, the Sullivan-Clinton expedition marched into
the Genesee Country in the summer of 1779, pillaging forty-two Indian
villages and laying waste their orchards and cornfields. 48 The army
turned back after burning the Genesee Castle near present Cuylerville,
while many of the tribesmen flocked north during the hard winter that
followed to seek refuge on the lower Genesee. Still more refugees gath
ered about the old French fort at Niagara until new villages could be
built, notably on Buffalo and Tonawanda creeks. 49

The final blow to the tribesmen came when the British negotiators
at Paris, frankly desiring an early peace settlement, recognized that the
Sullivan and the Clark expeditions together had established the claim
of the United States to all the territory south of the Great Lakes. 50
The Canadians, unable to see the justice or necessity for this concession,
refused either to communicate the terms to the Indians or to abandon
the posts along the border. 51 For more than a decade they conspired to

46 Alexander C. Flick, "The Loyalists," History of the State of New York, III,
327-343; Howard Swigget, War Out of Niagara (New York, 1933), pp. 3-58.

47 Ernest Cruickshank, The Story of Butler s Rangers (Welland, Ontario, 1893),
pp. 65-66; Swiggett, pp. 193-196; Albert H. Wright, "The Sullivan Expedition;
Contemporary Newspaper Comments and Letters," MS, Roch. Hist. Soc., pp. 7-59.

^Alexander C. Flick, "The Sullivan-Clinton Campaign of i779" History of ^
the State of New York, IV, 187-216.

49 Orsamus Turner, History of the Pioneer Settlement of Phelps and Gorham s
Purchase t and Morns Reserve (Rochester, 1851), p. 413.

* Definitive Treaty of Peace with Great Britain signed at Paris, Sept. 3, 1783,
Hunter Miller, ed., Treaties and Other International Acts of the United States of
America (Washington, 1931), II, iSa-^j Edgar W. Mclnnis, The Unguarded
Frontier (New York, 1942), pp. 87-106. See also Alexander C. Flick, The Suttivan-
Clmton Campaign in 1779 (Albany, 1929), p. 16.

M A. C. McLaughlin, "The Western Posts and the British Debts," American
Historical Assoc., Annual Report for 1804 (Washington, 1895), pp. 413-444; C. W.
Butterfield, Washington-Irvine Correspondence (Madison, Wis., 1882), pp. 192-193,
413-416; A. L. Burt, The Old Province of Quebec (Toronto and Minneapolis,
1933), PP- 329-356; S. F. Bemis, "Canada and the Peace Settlement of 1783,"
Canadian Historical Review, XIV, 1933. PP- 265-282; Samson Note Book, IV, n-
29. William Samson reviews the literature on this field and copies some unpub
lished letters supplied by E. Cruickshank.

16 THE WATER-POWER CITY

maintain their hold on the Great Lakes basin and to monopolize its
rich trade possibilities. 62 The Indians, suspicious of American intentions
and disillusioned by British neglect of their interests, began to plot the
formation of a great Indian confederation which they hoped might form
a semi-independent buffer state, extending from the Iroquois territory
west to the Mississippi. 53 But the young republic, negotiating separately
with the Iroquois at Fort Stanwix in 1784^ and with the other tribes
as opportunity arose, gradually established its authority, thus preparing
the way for the ultimate extinction of most of the Indian land titles. 55

THE OCCUPATION OF THE GENESEE FRONTIER

The conquest of the Genesee frontier, as dramatic as any in the
annals of the westward movement, was fortunately accomplished with
out further bloodshed. Conflicting state claims, rival groups of specu
lators, and impatient settlers contended with one another and with the
retreating Indians, yet a semblance of order was maintained. Trade
routes were opened; farms and village sites were cleared and occupied
with such despatch that within a remarkably short period a stable and
prosperous community emerged. Indeed, pioneer conditions were almost
outgrown on the Genesee frontier before permanent settlers appeared in
sufficient numbers on the lower Genesee to develop the resources of
its falls.

Jurisdiction over the Genesee Country was claimed by both Massa
chusetts and New York, based in the former case on the Common
wealth Charter, and in the latter on an interpretation of the grant to
the Duke of York, supported by a succession of Indian treaties and the
logic of the geographic situation. 50 After the breakdown of an attempted
mediation under the Articles of Confederation, the threat of a separate
state movement, 57 similar to that in Vermont, prompted a negotiated
settlement at Hartford, Connecticut, in i786. 68 The agreement, as finally

^Douglas Brymner, Report on the Canadian Archives: 1888 (Ottawa, 1889),
pp. S9-6i; the same, 1890 (1891), pp. 97~i75; Joseph Brant Letters in Henry
O Reilly Mementos, V, 77-82, MSS, N. Y. Hist. Soc.; D. G. Creighton, The Com
mercial Empire of the St. Lawrence: 1760-1830 (Toronto, 1937), pp. 131-141.

58 American State Papers, Indian Affairs (Washington, D. C., 1832), I, 8-9. The
Indian suspicions are well revealed in a number of letters to and from Gen. Philip
Schuyler in 1783, Letters of Gen. Schuyler, III, No. 153, MSS.

54 Franklin B. Hough, ed., Proceedings of the Commissioners of Indian Affairs
. . . in the State of New York (Albany, 1861), pp. 32-66.

55 Jay P. Kinney, A Continent Lost A Civilization Won (Baltimore, 1937).

56 Howard L. Osgood, "Title of the Phelps and Gorham Purchase," Pub. of
R. H. S. (1892), pp. 19-34.

57 This interesting though abortive movement awaits scholarly treatment. See
the "Note Books" and MS collections of Samson, Osgood, Conover, and O Reilly
in the Rochester Historical Society.

68 A copy of this treaty, on file at the University of Rochester, was made
from the Book of Deeds, No. 22, located in the office of the Secretary of State of

GEOLOGIC AND HUMAN BACKGROUNDS 17

ratified by both legislatures during the following year, recognized
New York s jurisdiction but secured for Massachusetts the preemption
title to all the land west of a line that practically followed the course
of Seneca Lake. 59

Meanwhile, the rich character of the Genesee Country, as reported
by the men of Sullivan s army and other early visitors, 60 had aroused
the interest of avaricious speculators, as well as foot-loose pioneers, and
the invasion was already under way. 61 New York s concern for the
preservation of peace with the Indians and for the maintenance of its
jurisdiction prompted the legislature in 1783 to create a Commission
of Indian Affairs with sole authority to conduct or supervise all nego
tiations for the cession of Indian lands within the state. 62

Nevertheless, an influential group of New York speculators hastened
to establish friendly relations with several of the tribes. In order lo
dodge the letter of the law, a 999-year lease was drawn and the signa
tures of forty-seven chiefs secured at Kanadesaga on November 30,
1787, granting a limited title to all the territory west of the old Line
of Property of i768. cs In their haste to establish a claim, John Living
ston and Dr. Caleb Benton, leaders of the New York Genesee Land
Company, as this group was called, failed to secure the signatures of
several of the leading sachems. The disgruntled chiefs, when discussing
their predicament with Canadian friends at Niagara that winter, were
persuaded to sign a new lease, predating it so as to cancel the Livingston
lease, and granting the same territory on similar terms to the Niagara
Genesee Land Company, as the John Butler and Samuel Street associa
tion came to be known. 64 Both of these speculations disregarded the

New York. Thomas C. Amory, Life of James Sullivan (Boston, 1859), I, 164,
quotes Sullivan s report on the Hartford negotiations. (Copied in Osgood, "Note
Books" II, #14.)

59 The issues raised by the two surveys of the Preemption Line are most thor
oughly discussed by George S. Conover, "Kanadesaga or Geneva," I, 326-347;
II, 126-135. In this MS history of early Geneva, copies of which may be found in
several leading libraries, Conover edits a valuable collection of Col. Hugh Maxwell
letters, written during the first survey of 1788, as well as a long letter of Benjamin
Ellicott, the second surveyor of 1792, describing the methods followed in making
that final survey. Conover does not accept the Orsamus Turner (Phelps and
G or ham s Purchase f p. 247) charge of fraud against the first surveyors.

e Turner, Phelps and Gorham s Purchase, pp. 130, 133-134; A. H. Wright,
"Newspaper Accounts of the Sullivan Expedition," MS, pp. 202-204; George S.
Conover, Journals of the Military Expedition of . . . John Sullivan (Auburn,
1887), PP- 59~6i, 74-75, 142, 218.

01 Conover, "Kanadesaga," I, 283-286, quotes from the Rev. Samuel Kirkland s
diary for 1786 and 1787.

02 Hough, Proceedings of the Commissioners of Indian Affairs, pp. g-ion.

63 Hough, pp. 119-128. See the lengthy footnote on these pages.

64 E, A. Cruickshank, ed., Records of Niagara (Niagara Historical Society,
No. 41, 1900), pp. 60-62; O Reilly, Sketches of Rochester, pp. 126-130.

i8 THE WATER-POWER CITY

Massachusetts preemption right, while apparently each group calculated
on the possibility of establishing a separate state or province if the cir
cumstances should prove favorable. 65

But a third group of speculators, organized in New England by
Oliver Phelps and Nathaniel Gorham, was destined to secure the coveted
lands. Phelps and Gorham determined to acquire a legal title, and, after
considerable difficulty, successfully persuaded the Massachusetts Legis
lature in May, 1788, to sell them the preemption claim to the entire
area for 300,000 in Commonwealth securities to be paid in three equal
annual installments. 66 Oliver Phelps, as the active leader of the com
pany, hastened west to negotiate with the tribes. Having already come
to terms with Livingston and his associates, promising them a number
of shares in return for aid in the negotiations, Phelps soon discovered
that he must likewise conciliate the Niagara speculators. 67 When that
had been accomplished and the chiefs finally assembled at Buffalo Creek
early in July, new difficulties appeared.

The Indians were determined not to part with any of their lands west
of the Genesee; indeed, only the argument that the earlier lease, if not
superseded, would deprive them of the whole territory induced them to
sell the eastern third of their land. 68 But the economic plight of the
tribes proved an equally important factor. Annual payments, the chiefs
apparently reasoned, would take the place of former benefits received
for military services, while provision could be made for smiths to repair

65 Turner, Phelps and Gorham s Purchase, pp. 106-110.

^Osgood MSS, II, No. 19, Roch. Hist. Soc. Osgood has copied extracts from
the Massachusetts Senate Journals, vol. 8, for 1787-1791 relating to the negotia
tions over these western lands. See his "Title of the Phelps and Gorham Purchase,"
Pub., R. H. S. ( 1892), pp. 34-36.

6T Hough, Proceedings of the Commissioners of Indian Affairs, p. 449, and
passim; Turner, Phelps and Gorham s Purchase, pp. 13 7-1141; Rev. Samuel Kirk-
land, "Journal of 1788," MS. See the copy made by Conover, "Kanadesaga," I,
317-321, from the original in the State Library; Conover includes additional evi
dence of collusion, I, 315-317; see John Butler s attempted vindication, John
Butler to Sir John Johnson, 1790, Colonial Office Records, "Canada" Q 46, pt. 2,
quoted in Blake McKelvey, "Historic Aspects of the Phelps and Gorham Treaty
of July 4-8, 1788," Rochester History, I, No. i, pp. 21-22. Samuel Street Cor
respondence, MSS, University of Rochester, starting with Oct. 20, 1788-Aug. 22,
1789, affords ample evidence of close collaboration, at least after the event. An
important letter of March 10, 1789, confesses that Street has been unable to col
lect funds from his Niagara associates for the payments due on his shares because
of fear of losing favor with the Canadian authorities. This pressure later prompted
Butler s attempted vindication and called forth the statement by William Johnston,
the interpreter, whose inability to recall some of the details reveals that the state
ment probably was not prepared until just before its submission in 1790, The de
sire to present a clean record may have caused Butler and Johnston to forget the
activities of the Niagara Genesee Land Company in which Butler at least was
interested. See Johnston s statement in Cruickshank, Records of Niagara, pp. 60-64.

es Hough, pp. 160-171.

GEOLOGIC AND HUMAN BACKGROUNDS 19

their arms and utensils; further, it would be very agreeable to have a
sawmill to cut boards for better houses and a gristmill to relieve them
of much labor and stimulate larger crops. 69 Oliver Phelps eagerly agreed
to build mills for their use in return for an additional mill plot, gen
erously laid out twelve by twenty-four miles in size, on the west side
of the river at the falls. Thus, when the treaty was completed, the site
of Rochester indeed practically the whole of Monroe County was
included in the 2,6oo,ooo-acre cession, and the Indians were to receive
as their payment 2,100 in New York currency and 200 annually
forever not forgetting the mills to be erected for their convenience
at the Genesee falls. 70

<

With the title assured, Oliver Phelps hastened back to his temporary
headquarters near the Indian village of Kanadesaga. There the task of
surveying the tract and dividing it into townships was pushed forward,
and the northern shore of Canandaigua Lake was chosen as the site for
the principal village. Plans for roads to the east, generally following
the main Indian trails, initiated the work of chopping out the essential
highways. 71 The problem of dividing the townships among the associated
speculators and of collecting funds for the first payment to Massachu
setts called Phelps back east, but before departing he delegated the task
of building the mills at the Genesee falls to Ebenezer Allan, granting
him a hundred-acre lot on the west bank at the upper fall for the job. 72

Allan was an energetic and colorful representative of the frontier.
Despite earlier escapades as a Tory ranger during the last years of the
Revolution, Allan s trading activities among the Indians and his mar
riage to the Seneca lass, Sally, had brought him the nickname "Indian,"
while his efforts to assist the States in establishing peace with the Indians
had won the confidence of several leading Americans. Shortly before
Phelps s arrival, Allan had squatted on the rich bottom lands west of
the Genesee near the site of Scottsville, where he was already improving
a small farm, having added Lucy Chapman, his first white wife, to a
growing household which numbered two daughters by Sally, his own
sister and her husband, Christopher Dugan, as well as Lucy s parents

69 A Brief Sketch of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, Religious Society of
Friends to . . . Indians of the State of New York (Philadelphia, 1879), p. 7-
Cornplanter, in a letter of 1791 to the Philadelphia Friends, said in part: "Brothers:

The Seneca Nation see that the Great Spirit intends they should not continue to
live by hunting. They look around on every side and enquire, c Who is it that shall
teach them. . . ."

70 McKelvey, "Historic Aspects of the Phelps and Gorham Treaty," pp. 17-18,
quotes the deed and the appended bond of Oliver Phelps.

71 Turner, Phelps and Gorham s Purchase, pp. 163-164; Conover, "Kanadesaga,"

72 Morley B. Turpin, "Ebenezer Allan in the Genesee Country," R. H. S., Pub.,
XI, 327, quotes the original articles of agreement.

20 THE WATER-POWER CITY

and married sister. A strong personality assured Allan the leadership
over this the most considerable settlement in the Genesee Valley in
1788, while his many associations with the Indians made him a fit
choice for the pioneer miller at the falls. 73

Allan knew the Genesee Country well enough to realize the advan
tages of the proposed mill site. The promise of growing settlements to
the southeast and the expected trade with the Indians sharpened his
enthusiasm for the venture. In the spring of 1789, between planting and
harvest, time was found to ride down to the falls and plow out a
primitive raceway. A half-acre lot in the center of present downtown
Rochester was cleared of trees, and by early summer a crude sawmill
stood ready to cut the lumber for a more substantial gristmill, though
it was the middle of November before fourteen able-bodied white men
could be assembled to raise the heavy timbers. Tradition reports that
a trading vessel made a timely visit to the mouth of the Genesee, un
loading a keg of rum to add zest to the occasion. Allan sold his farm
that fall for the fair price of $2.50 an acre, thus securing funds for the
new enterprise, and in the spring of 1790 moved with his growing
family, already including Lucy s baby son, Seneca, down to the mills
at the falls. 74

Difficulties began to appear soon after Allan took his stand at the
extreme outpost of the Genesee frontier. Aside from a small Indian
settlement overlooking Irondequoit Bay, the nearest neighbors in 1790
were Israel and Simon Stone at the site of Pittsford, John Lusk at
Irondequoit Landing, the Shaeffers on Allan s old farm at Scottsville,
and possibly the Tory trader, William Walker, at the mouth of the
river. 75 Several miles further south settlers were arriving in greater
numbers, though they seldom visited the mills at the falls. 76 Prospects
for trade with the Indians failed to develop, partly because of the dire
poverty of the tribesmen, but chiefly because the great distance separat
ing their village from the falls had made this aspect of the enterprise

78 Turpin, "Ebenezer Allan," pp. 313-338. Mr. Turpin has reassessed Rochester s
much abused pioneer. Earlier judgments by Turner (Phelps and Gorham s Purchase,
pp. 405-406), Seaver (Mary Jemison, pp. 79-92), Jane Marsh Parker (Rochester, A
Story Historical, Rochester, 1884, pp. 47-50) , and Harris (in Peck, Semi-Centennial
History, pp. 76-80) emphasized Allan s failure to conform to the Victorian , code
of the nineteenth century. It is worth noting that all these writers used the stories
dug up in 1821 when Seneca Allan s claim against the property of the loo-acre
tract was stimulating a search for evidence to disprove Seneca s mother s dower
claims! See Troup, Letter Book No. 7, MS, pp. 8-9, I x89~i9o, 195-198, 209-215,
265-267, 316-317, 477, 506; also Rochester Letters, MSS, Roch. Hist. Soc.

74 Turpin, "Ebenezer Allan," pp. 325, 327-328; Blake McKelvey, "Indian Allan s
Mills," Rochester History, I, No. 4, 2-8.

75 Turner, Phelps and Gorham s Purchase, pp. 410, 4x3-414^ O Reilly, Sketches
of Rochester, pp. 243-245.

76 "Journal of William Berczy," R> H. S., Pub., XX, 183-184, 212, 214.

GEOLOGIC AND HUMAN BACKGROUNDS 21

Illusory from the start. All hope of correcting the situation by nurturing
Indian agricultural communities was meanwhile held in abeyance by
the preoccupation of the chiefs at numerous council fires where the
proposed Indian confederation was under discussion. 77 While the pioneer
corn-cracker at the falls stood idle, Allan turned again to trading ex
peditions up the Genesee and down the Susquehanna. 78 In Philadelphia
he renewed a business acquaintance with Robert Morris and ultimately
found there a purchaser for his mill tract. 79

A stream of settlers from New England was beginning to flow
toward the Genesee Country, though not in numbers sufficient to sup
port the vast speculation of Phelps and Gorham. Their land office,
opened at Canandaigua, the first in the country to be established in
the midst of the territory to be developed, provided articles of sale in
lieu of deeds to those unable to make more than a small down payment
on the lands. 80 The first survey, when completed, marked off 103 town
ships in rectangular plots, some thirty of which were sold or contracted
for as units, while most of the rest were allotted to the company as
sociates, although few of these Yankee speculators were able to make
the payments necessary to retain their lands.

Indeed, Phelps and Gorham, with their first payment to Massa
chusetts due in January, 1789, had already been forced to surrender
their claim to the territory west of the lands ceded by the Indians and
to ask for an adjustment of their remaining obligations. The depreciated
state securities in which they had contracted for payment had jumped
in value, partly because of Hamilton s fiscal policy, and the company
which had bought on the margin, hoping to meet its obligations from
the return on sales at advanced prices, was forced to liquidate all un-
assigned assets. Accordingly, in August, 1790, the unsold portion of the
Phelps and Gorham Purchase was conveyed to Robert Morris of Phila
delphia for approximately $i5o,ooo. si Financially, the New England
speculators just about broke even, but Oliver Phelps and Nathaniel
Gorham, who had reserved the Canandaigua township and other tracts
for themselves, and several of the associates (notably the Wadsworth
brothers, James and William), who had been able to make payments
on their lands, emerged with valuable estates. 82

Robert Morris, meanwhile, was so extensively involved in land

77 American State Papers, Indian Affairs, I, 1-643, deals with negotiations
with the Indians from 1789 to 1800.

78 Turpin, "Ebenezer Allan," pp. 329-333.

79 Turner, Phelps and Gorham s Purchase, p. 243. Morris consulted Allan s opin
ion on the value of the Genesee Country before making his purchase of Phelps
and Gorham.

80 Conover, "Kanadesaga," II, 100-101, 110-112.

81 0sgood, "Title of the Phelps and Gorham Purchase," pp. 42-44.

82 Turner, Phelps and Gorham s Purchase, pp. 163-240, 324-344.

22 THE WATER-POWER CITY

speculations in all parts of the country that his Genesee purchase ap
peared but a minor venture. Almost before he became aware of its value,
his agent in England disposed of the entire property for an even third
of a million dollars a quick profit of 100 per cent on the investment, 83
Nevertheless, Sir William Pulteney and his English associates could
well afford to pay twenty-six cents an acre for land in the Genesee
Country, even though many of the choice northern townships had
already been staked out by the Phelps and Gorham interests. The
Pulteney Estate, as it was henceforth called, was placed under the
management of Captain Charles Williamson, a naturalized Scot, who
quickly developed unusual skill as a land promoter, distinguishing him
self and his backers from the majority of speculators who as land
brokers reaped their profits without taking a constructive part in de
veloping their territories. 8 *

Indeed the possibilities of the vast estate appealed to Williamson s
bold imagination. When a second survey revealed that the site of Geneva
and the major part of Sodus Bay lay within the boundaries of the tract,
villages were quickly planned for these two locations. But Williamson,
operating chiefly from populous Philadelphia and Baltimore, rather
than from Boston, saw the Susquehanna, not the Mohawk, as the
proper gateway to the Genesee Country. Before the end of 1793, he
had planted two towns on this southern trade route: Bath on the
Conhocton near the head of rafting possibilities down that branch of
the Susquehanna, and Williamsburg at the junction of Canaseraga
Creek with the Genesee. A road was opened through the mountains
almost due north from the site of Williamsport, Pennsylvania, to
Williamsburg, thus greatly shortening the overland route to market.
Groups of immigrants were brought in and provided with cabins and
stock. Gristmills, taverns, and schools were built with such a generous
use of the funds of his English backers that Williamson was displaced

88 The Pulteney Estate, as the area was later known, was not Robert Morris*
only speculation in Western New York. For a brief account of his many interests
here, see Conover, "Kanadesaga," II, 119-123. "The Narrative of Thomas Morris,"
Historical Magazine (Second Series, 1869), V, 370-384, and Henry O Reilly s edi
torial notes, ibid., pp. 368-388, afford a good idea of the activities of Thomas in
negotiating with the Indians and conducting varied land speculations for his father
and himself. In the Osgood MSS; Phelps and Gorham Papers, MSS, Univ. Roch,;
Morris Letters in the Henry O Reilly Collection, MSS, N, Y, Hist. Soc.; and Robert
Morris Papers, N. Y. Public Library, are materials available for a more careful
study of, this subject than has yet appeared. See however, Charles F. Milliken,
"Thomas Morris," R. H. S., Pub., VII, 41-53.

84 Helen Cowan, "Charles Williamson: Genesee Promoter: Friend of Anglo-
American Rapprochement," R. H. S., Pub., vol. XIX, passim; Osgood, "Title of the
Phelps and Gorham Purchase," pp. 44-51, traces the estate transactions and notes
the succession of agencies, A good brief bibliography is appended to this article.
Paul, D. Evans, "The Pulteney Purchase," N. Y. State Hist. Assoc., Proceeding
XX, 83-104.

GEOLOGIC AND HUMAN BACKGROUNDS 23

from his agency in 1801. Nevertheless, within a brief decade this color
ful Scot had made the Genesee Country one of the most popular goals
for westward migrating Americans. 85

PIONEER WAYS PARTIALLY OUTGROWN

Although events conspired to retard its development, the lower
Genesee was not entirely neglected during this period. Early in 1791,
Ebenezer Allan, having found the mill seat too quiet for his energetic
temperament, left it in charge of his brother-in-law, Christopher Dugan,
until the next year, when the property was conveyed to Benjamin
Barton, a Philadelphia associate of Robert Morris. 86 In the brief interval
between their purchase of the unsold portion of the Phelps and Gorham
estate and the arrival of advice from England concerning its sale, the
Morris associates devised plans for a trading town on the east bank of
the Genesee at the lower falls. A plat was drawn for a town named after
ancient Athens, 87 but this visionary scheme was soon forgotten, and
even Allan s mills across the river were abandoned late in 1794, when
the prospects for the development of the area reached their lowest ebb.
Several factors operated to postpone the planting of permanent settle
ments on the lower Genesee. The possibility of an Indian uprising con
tinued to threaten the Genesee frontier until news arrived of Wayne s
victory at Fallen Timbers, and the grievances of the Iroquois were not
adjusted until the Pickering Treaty was signed at Canandaigua on
November 11, I794. 88 Meanwhile, Lieutenant Governor John G. Simcoe,
zealously defending the claims of Upper Canada merchants to complete
domination over the fur trade, refused to permit American boats on
Lake Ontario, thus effectively blighting trade prospects on the lower
Genesee. 89 Though Jay s Treaty set aside that policy in 1794, the posts
at Oswego and Niagara were not surrendered until August, 1796.*
The development of a Genesee trading port was then quickly under-

85 Helen Cowan, "Charles Williamson," pp. 145-176, 227-250.

86 Copy of a deed from Allan to Barton, Mar. 21, -1792, Henry O Reilly Doc.,
No. 2492, Rochester Hist. Soc. Allan s price was 500 in New York currency, about
$15 an acre, including improvements. Allan, disappointed in land and trade ven
tures on the upper Genesee, finally moved on to make a fresh start in Canada in
1794. See Turpin, "Ebenezer Allan," pp. 330-338; Fred C. Hamil, "Ebenezer Allan
in Canada," Ontario Historical Society, Papers and Records, XXXVI, 83-93.

87 See the photostat copy of the town plat in Rochester Hist. Soc. The original
was found attached to the MS deed in the County Clerk s Office in Bath, New
York. See also Samuel Street to Oliver Phelps, March 10 and 23, 1789, Street
Correspondence, Univ. Rochester.

88 Report of the Treaty with the Six Nations at Canandaigua, 1794, Timothy
Pickering Papers, No. 60: 198-241, MSS, Mass. Hist. Soc.; Chapin Correspondence
in Henry O Reilly Western Mementos, N. Y. Hist. Soc., X, 72, 76, 88, 92 ; Turner,
Phelps and Gorham s Purchase, p. 167.

80 Turner, pp. 315-324; E. A. Cruickshank, ed., Correspondence of Lieutenant

Governor John Graves Simcoe (Ontario Hist. Soc., Toronto, 1924), III, 20; V, 65.

90 Samson Note Book, IV, 23-27, assembles evidence concerning this surrender.

24 THE WATER-POWER CITY

taken. Gideon King, Zadock Granger, and several families from Suffield,
Connecticut, located on the west bank at the lower falls in the winter of
1796-97. At least while the surveyors were busy laying out the tract, a
bustling activity characterized King s Landing. Town lots were marked
off, several log houses erected, a dock and a sailing vessel built. Ship
ments of potash in exchange for salt from Oswego gave promise of a
bright commercial future for Fall Town, as the landing was sometimes
called. 91 A rival trading center, known as Tryon Town, appeared a few
miles east at the old Indian landing on Irondequoit Bay, 92 while a new
miller, Josiah Fish, was stationed at the upper falls by Charles William
son who had by this time acquired title to Allan s hundred-acre
tract. 93

As the Genesee falls acquired a reputation for natural beauty, oc
casional travelers en route to Niagara turned aside to view them. One
early visitor, the Comte de Colbert Maulevrier, was not too favorably
impressed in 1798 by the accommodations at the mill, where he was
forced to share a room with seven others, "both men and women, and
five or six in the adjoining room all sleeping close together in feather
beds on the floor." The hospitable miller had, it seems, given shelter
to several families on their way to Canada who were awaiting the arrival
of a schooner which already maintained frequent communications be
tween York (Toronto) and the Genesee. Colbert de Maulevrier, after
visiting the several falls, enjoyed a drink of grog at King s Landing
"where the boats have unloaded for the last two years," but observed
that "sickness carried off five of the new settlers and the news of their
deaths kept several families from coming here from Connecticut." *

In 1800 the English traveler, John Maude, found the sawmill in ruins
and the gristmill "almost entirely neglected." The one evidence of local
enterprise that impressed Maude was the bridge over Deep Hollow
gully, for the erection of which Gideon King and Josiah Fish had
"collected all the men in the neighborhood, to the number of one hun
dred, and in two days at the expense of $475 the bridge was completed,"
thus opening the road on the west bank from the mills to the landing.
But Maude was surprised to find Simon King, "the only respectable

91 [Charles Williamson], Description of the Genesee County, Its Rapidly Pro
gressive Population and Improvements: In a Series of Letters From a Gentleman
to His Friend (Albany, 1798) ; R. H. S., Pub., IV, 335-346.

M A. Emerson Babcock, "The City of Tryon and Vicinity," R. H. S., Pub.,
I, 112-149.

98 Charles Sholl to Charles Williamson, Sept. 4, 1797, Osgood MSS, Roch. Hist.
Soc.; Peter Sheffer s testimony concerning the Allan mill, Mar. 24, 1845, MS,
Rochester Letters, Roch. Hist. Soc.

94 Comte de Colbert Maulevrier, Voyage dans I Interieur des Etats-Unis et au
Canada, Gilbert Chinard, ed. (Baltimore, 1935), pp. 44-45; see R, W. G. Vail s
translation of the local portion, R, H, S., Pub., XIV, 159-165.

GEOLOGIC AND HUMAN BACKGROUNDS 25

settler in this Township" and the proprietor of 3000 acres, content to
live in an "indifferent log-house." &5

-<

The lower Genesee thus failed to keep pace with developments else
where in the Genesee Country, to which as a whole the early travelers
could scarcely give sufficient praise. 96 The fearful pall of the "Genesee
fever" which hung over the region in the early nineties began to lift
as the cleared fields were extended, the rich bottom lands drained, and
more substantial houses provided. 97 The interior settlements had not
been seriously affected by either the Canadian or the Indian threats;
in fact, land speculators there expressed concern lest the adjustment
of these difficulties and the opening of new regions to the west and in
Canada might depress the demand for Genesee lands. 98 A Western
Inland Lock Navigation Company was chartered in 1792 to improve
and join the natural water routes provided by the Mohawk and Finger
Lakes rivers. Boats started to push their way slowly along this primitive
canal late in 1795, although the construction work was not completed
until 1802." By that date improvements in the Susquehanna route were
already in progress, 100 while the old Genesee Road was being rebuilt
by the Seneca Turnpike Company. 101 In spite of the great difficulties

95 Oliver Phelps to Justin Ely, Sept. 9, 1797, Phelps and Gorham Papers,
photostats at Univ. Rochester; John Maude, Visit to the Falls of Niagara in 1800
(London, 1826), pp. 106, 109, 113. After the death of Gideon King and several
others in 1798, his wife, Ruth, returned to Connecticut with her two younger boys,
but other members of the settlement carried on at the landing until after Simon
King s death in 1805 when several of them moved to farms along the Ridge.

96 "Foreign Travelers Notes on Rochester and the Genesee Country before 1840,"
R. H. S., Pub., XVIII, Part I.

97 Edward G. Ludlow, Observations, on the Lake Fevers and Other Diseases of
the Genesee Country in the State of New York (New York, 1823) ; O Reilly,
Sketches of Rochester, pp. 91-104, quotes Ludlow and other early authorities at
length. See also R. H. S., Pub., XI, 346-347.

08 Robert Troup to Charles Williamson, Nov. 6, 1794, Osgood MSS, No. 303,
Roch. Hist. Soc. See also Paul D. Evans, "Holland Land Company," Buffalo Hist.
Soc., Pub., XXVIII, 227.

"Conover, "Kanadesaga," III, 730-7375 "The First Report of the Director
and Engineer of the Inland Lock Navigation Co." (1796), Buffalo Hist. Soc., Pub.,
II, 157-180; J. S. Grant, "Early Modes of Travel and Transportation," Cayuga
Hist. Soc., Collections, VII (Auburn, 1889), 91-111.

100 D. T. Blake to Charles Williamson, Baltimore, July 28, Aug. 14, 1802, Osgood
MSS, Roch. Hist. Soc.

101 Benjamin DeWitt, "A Sketch of the Turnpike Roads in the State of New
York," Society for the Promotion of Useful Knowledge (1807), II, 190-204.
DeWitt notes that turnpike roads already (1806) stretch across the state from the
Massachusetts line through Albany and Utica to "Canandarque," a distance of 234
miles, and as soon as the Ontario and Genesee Turnpike Co., capitalized at $175,000,
completes its road to Black Rock, the state will be crossed by a road 324 miles
in length! See also, O Reilly, Sketches of Rochester, pp. 170-175.

26 THE WATER-POWER CITY

which faced the boatmen and wagoners, trade was flowing in steadily
increasing volume over the eastern 102 and southern routes to the neglect
of the lower Genesee. The markets were in the East, and thither likewise
went the payments on the land and for the equipment and supplies
which could not be provided on the frontier.

Travelers marveled not only at the number of heavy sleighs of
produce headed eastward, 108 but also at the almost unending succession
of vehicles of all sorts with which the settlers were moving west. 104 The
migration gained momentum as the nineteenth century dawned. The
1,075 persons accredited to the Genesee Country in 1790 increased to
17,006 by 1800, and to 75,160 by i8io. 105 Before the last date six
counties were organized, court houses and jails erected in Canandaigua,
Bath, and Batavia, while in addition to these towns a dozen other vil
lages developed sufficient community life to support churches, schools,
and even libraries, 106 not to mention the taverns and stores which vied
for the trade of travelers and farmers alike. 107 By 1810 there were five
village papers printed west of Lake Seneca, a slight foretaste of the in
vasion of country printers soon to occur. 108 A few "melancholy facts"
were observed amidst the general progress by one of the older editors,
who lamented "that political zeal has recently usurped the empire of
patriotism, and the acquisition of property [has] become almost the
sole object of pursuit." 109

It required a frequent rallying of Zion s forces to battle these trends,
as well as to overcome many crude pioneer habits. When the Reverend
John B. Hudson, a Methodist lay preacher, started his missionary labors
on the New York frontier in 1804, he found the southern Genesee
pioneers still living for the most part in log houses covered with bark
roofs. He reported "whiskey and Sabbath desecration . . . notoriously

102 W. G. Mayer, "The History of Transportation in the Mohawk Valley,"
N. Y. State Hist. Assoc., Proceedings, XIV (1915), 214-230.
108 Buffalo Hist. Soc., Pub., VI, 185.

104 Col. William A. Bird, "Early Transportation Between Albany and Buffalo,"
MS, Buffalo Hist. Soc.

105 N. Y. State Census (1855). Compiled from tables on p. xxxiv. The figures
represent the successive population for the entire area west of the Preemption
Line, though by 1810 the western portion was not always considered a part of
the Genesee Country.

100 Blake McKelvey, "Early Library Development In and Around Rochester,"
R. H. S., Pub., XVI, 12-15.

107 Augustus Porter, "Narrative of the Early Years," Buffalo Hist. Soc., Pub.,
VII, 277-322; Turner, Phelps and Gorham s Purchase, passim; Blake McKelvey,
"On the Educational Frontier," R. H. S., Pub., XVII, 3-8.

108 Milton W. Hamilton, The Country Printer, New York State, 1785-1830 (New
York, 1936), pp. 54, 88, 258, 301. See especially the map on p. 87. See also William
H. Samson, "Studies in Local History," Rochester Post-Express (1907-1908), No. V.
(Scrapbook in Roch. Hist. Soc.)

109 Ontario Repository, Dec. 26, 1809.

GEOLOGIC AND HUMAN BACKGROUNDS 27

prevalent" among the inhabitants, who were "certainly not noted for
morality, and still less so in regard to religion." no Deists and infidels
appeared to surround him, though he may have exaggerated his dif
ficulties, for the labors of fellow Methodists had made some headway
around the Finger Lakes, where their first camp meeting gathered five
thousand persons on the lake shore near Geneva in 1805. In 1810, when
the Genesee conference was formed, four extended circuits were organ
ized to serve the scattered Methodists of the Genesee Country. 111

Several other denominational groups had likewise shouldered the task
of developing religious traditions along the Genesee. Episcopal mis
sionaries had visited the region as early as 1797, and at least one of
their pastors was continuously in residence after 1801, although an
organized effort to establish Episcopal churches did not occur until
i8n. 112 The Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Baptists were more
successful. The first, able to organize a Presbytery at Geneva in 1805,
numbered already three charges west of Seneca Lake, to which two
others were soon added. 113 When the Baptist missionary, John Colby,
passed through the northern portion of the Genesee Country in 1810,
he found Congregational and Baptist churches in almost every village, 114
which was scarcely surprising in view of the predominantly New Eng
land origin of these settlers. 115 A brick meeting house appeared at Bloom-
field in i8o9, 116 and by this date travelers were describing several of the
villages as "very pretty" or "handsome," marvelling at the number of
their elegant frame houses and quaint cottages, sparkling under fresh
coats of white paint. 117

By the end of the decade Canandaigua, Geneva, and Buffalo each

110 [J. B. Hudson], Narrative of the Christian Experience, Travels and Labors
of John B. Hudson (Rochester, 1838), pp. 102-106, 127.

111 [Hudson], Narrative of the Christian Experience, pp. i33-i34> I43-J44J
Francis Asbury, Journal of the Rev. Francis Asbury (New York, 1821), III, 225-
226, 292-293; F. G. Hibbard, History of the East Genesee Conference of the
Methodist Episcopal Church (New York, 1887), pp. 16-19.

m* Fifty Years: Semi-Centennial Commemoration of the Diocese of Western
New York (Buffalo, 1888), pp. 17, 18-19.

118 James H. Hotchkin, A History of the Purchase and Settlement of Western
New York and of the Rise, Progress, and Present State of the Presbyterian Church
in That Section (New York, 1848), pp. 79~8o.

1U [John Colby], The Life, Experience and Travels of John Colby, Preacher of
the Gospel (Rochester, 1827), pp. 92-93.

115 James H. Dill, Congregationalism in Western New York (Rochester, 1859),
pp. 1-5.

116 T[homas] C[ooper], A Ride to Niagara in 1809 (Rochester, 1915), P- 14-

117 John Melish, Travels in the United States of America in the Years 1806, and
1807, and x8op, 1810, and 18x1 (Philadelphia, 1812), p. 519; Duke de la Roche-
foucault Liancourt, Travels through the United States of North America in the
Years 1795, 1706, and 1707 (London, 1800), I, 264; Comte de Colbert Maulevrier,
P- 43-

28 THE WATER-POWER CITY

boasted upwards of one hundred houses, 118 and numerous smaller ham
lets were scattered along the stage road 119 between them or southward
toward Geneseo and Bath. Several Indian settlements remained in the
area, possibly the most frequently visited being that at Canawaugus,
overlooking the Genesee River where the state road crossed west of
Avon. 12a But the settlers were beginning to feel themselves to be a part
of an established community. Already they were represented by seven
delegates in the assembly at Albany and one in Congress. In spite of
their New England origin, or because such a large portion of the settlers
had come from the Jeffersonian districts of western Massachusetts,
Connecticut, and Vermont, 121 the political sentiments of the area gen
erally favored the Jeffersonians, although Canandaigua, Bloomfield, and
a few other towns were staunchly Federalist. 122 Signs of the crude
frontier days were disappearing from the wide swath cut in the forest
by the settlers as they advanced across the state, and the time had at
last arrived for a permanent advance into the lower Genesee.

118 Horatio G. Spafford, Gazetteer of the State of New-York (Albany, 1813),
pp. 141, 152, 200. See also Robert Munro, "A Description of the Genesee Country
[in 1804]," O Callaghan, Documentary History of New York, II, 679-69 !.

119 In 1807, John Metcalf was licensed to operate a stage between Canandaigua
and Buffalo. N. Y. Assembly Journal (1819), p. 106.

120 Duke de la Rochefoucault Liancourt, I, 290-291; Ctooper], Ride to Niagara f
p. 14; Frances Wright, Views of Society and Manners in America by an English-
woman (New York, 1821), pp. 147-159.

121 William W. Campbell, ed., The Life and Writings of DeWitt Clinton (New
York, 1849), PP- IO 3> IQ 8) no, in.

12S Lockwood R. Doty, History of Livingston County (Jackson, Mich., 1905),
pp. 276, 280; Ontario Repository,, May 10, 1803, May 9, 1809; John T. Horton,
James Kent: 1763-1847 (New York, 1939), pp. 130-133.

CHAPTER II

THE LOWER GENESEE SETTLEMENTS

1808-1815

THE RAPID GROWTH of the Gcnesce frontier, although previously
channeled in other directions^ was destined to play a vital role
in developments at the falls. The flow of surplus produce over
the eastern and southern trade routes was suddenly checked when the
Embargo and Non-Intercourse Acts stopped exports and glutted the
Atlantic markets after 1808. As the laws were not rigidly enforced
against trade with Canada, the produce of the Genesee soon found a
new outlet down the river and over the lake to the north. 1 The ad
vanced stage of the interior settlements thus provided attractive com
mercial opportunities for a trading town on the lower Genesee. Several
enterprising villages quickly appeared, though the contest for priority
which ensued was not to be terminated until tlie hazards of a frontier
war and the charting of a new trade artery gave the advantage to
Rochester.

A BRIDGEHEAD, A MILL TOWN, OR A LAKE PORT

Unlike many pioneer villages in the valley, born of the farsighted
plans of paternal promoters, Rochester was a product of the functional
relationship between its choice site and the trade requirements of the
surrounding settlements. The lower Genesee did attract several efforts,
by determined pioneers who threw their best energies into the task of
building the much desired trading port, yet circumstances intervened
to check these ventures. Meanwhile, the growth of neighboring settle
ments, the opening of new roads, the building of a bridge at the falls,
and the persistent increase in the volume of exports finally set the stage
by 1812 for the appearance of a combined milling and trading town on
Allan s original mill lot. Fortunately a wise proprietor, able to harmonize
the conflicting interests on the lower Genesee, arrived in time to en
courage and direct the eager settlers who rushed in to take their stand
at the falls.

X A comparable stream of American settlers was attracted by a liberal land
policy into Upper Canada, not closed to immigrants from the States until 1815.
Marcus L. Hansen, The Mingling of the Canadian and American Peoples (New
Haven, 1940), pp. 89-90, 95-100. See also note 17, below.

30 THE WATER-POWER CITY

The retarded development of the lower Genesee as compared with
many parts of western New York in the early iSoo s was matched by
the slow growth of settlements in the adjacent territory. The area of
present Monroe County contained less than 100 scattered pioneers and
surveyors in 1790^ numbered 1192 settlers in 1800, and boasted only
4683, or scarcely seven per square mile, in i8io. 3 The majority of these
were located in the southeastern portion where they formed the town
of Northfield in 1794, renaming it .Boyle in 1808; but a goodly number
had already settled west of the river in the town of Northampton,
organized in 1797 and renamed Gates after its southern and western
portions had been cut off in r8o8. 4 These Monroe County pioneers were
widely and sparsely scattered, yet sure evidence of their resolve to
subdue the surrounding forest and establish permanent communities
was afforded by the roads they were opening and the ten or more schools
already provided for the children of the area by i8io. 5

The vital relation between these neighboring settlements and the im
pending developments at the falls appeared with the agitation for a
bridge across the lower Genesee. It was in 1807 that Calvin Freeman,
a pioneer settler on the Ridge twenty miles west of the river, petitioned
for a bridge at the falls and a state road along the Ridge westward from
the Genesee to Lewiston. Though he had labored with other pioneers,
four years before, in building the bridge where the old state road
crossed the river at Avon, few supporters for the new route could now
be found in LeRoy, Batavia, Buffalo, or Black Rock, all located on that
first highway. Freeman, however, collected many signatures at Lewiston
and in the log cabins scattered along the trail following the Ridge from
that place to the Genesee. 6 Settlers east of the river, notably those at
Pittsford and Perinton, drafted similar petitions and sent Enos Stone
to Albany to press the proposal before the legislature. It required all the
weight they could muster to counteract the arguments of their southern
neighbors, who described the region as "a God-forsaken place 1 in
habited by muskrats, visited only by straggling trappers, through

2 James L. Barton, Early Reminiscences of Western New York (Buffalo, 1848),
p. 45. The census figures of 1790 are here broken down and assigned to the town
ships as of 1820. It is impossible to get an accurate figure for the Monroe County
area, but only 66 were located definitely within this area, while most of the 166
listed in the townships straddling the southern boundary were doubtless living well
south of the line.

8 N. Y. Census (1855), p. xxiv. Monroe County had approximately 144 per
square mile in 1855 at the close of its water-power era, and 654 in 1940.

4 Albert H. Wright, "Old Northampton in Western New York," R, H. $., Pub.,
VII, 287-288, 303-306, 315; Ontario Repository, Jan. i, 1811.

5 Blake McKelvey, "On the Educational Frontier," R. H. S., Pub., XVII, 5-6;
Wright, "Old Northampton," pp. 337-34Q, 346-353.

6 Pioneer Association Record Book, MS, p. 149, Roch. Hist. Soc,, letter from
Calvin Freeman in newspaper clipping of Oct. 12, 1869.

LOWER GENESEE SETTLEMENTS 31

which neither man nor beast could gallop without fear of starvation
or fever and ague!" 7 Finally the bridge bill passed, directing Ontario
and Genesee Counties to raise $12,000 for the purpose, and work started
in 1 8 10 on a wooden bridge at the point where Main Street crosses
today.

Roads as well as bridges were needed if the area s advantages were
to be developed. The west river road, opened by the early pioneers from
Scottsville north to King s Landing during the nineties, was a round
about approach, emphasizing the importance of the old state road which
by-passed the lower Genesee, and a new east-west highway seemed a
major necessity. Apparently it was in 1805 that the pathmasters of the
old town of Northfield laid out a new route from their chief settlement
(Pittsford) to the old Indian Landing trail and northwestward to the
fording place over the Genesee. But not until the state took over this
road in 1812 was the marshy stretch between Culver s and the new
bridge made passable for vehicles. 8

With the road and bridge assured, Enos Stone, a relative of several
of the founders of Pittsford, moved with his wife and infant son into a
one-room shanty on the east bank of the river overlooking the ford,
where he commenced to clear the land acquired by his father from
Oliver Phelps at 44 cents an acre two decades before. 9 Isaac W. Stone,
arriving with his wife and five children in the same year, 1810, purchased
a five-acre lot overlooking the site of the proposed bridge and erected a
crude tavern to accommodate the workmen and chance visitors. 10

<

But the lower Genesee was not designated for a simple bridgehead,
nor for an overnight tavern-town, and its more vigorous early settlements
sprang from the growing river trade. Unfortunately (in the eyes of
pioneer traders) the succession of falls and rapids seriously obstructed
the river as a commercial route, compelling a long portage from the

7 Henry O Reilly, Sketches of Rochester, pp. 247-249; Ontario Repository,
May 23, 1809.

8 Northfield Town Records, Supervisors Meetings, MSS in Pittsford, N. Y.,
Town Hall; Orsamus Turner, Phelps and Gorham s Purchase, pp. 427-429;
Campbell, DeWitt Clinton , p. 112; Edwin Scrantom, "Old Citizen s Letters,"
Scrapbook, pp. 1-2, Roch. Hist. Soc. See also Col. Nathaniel Rochester s Memorial
to the Legislature, 1812, MS in Canandaigua, in which it appears that the original
road to the bridge may have followed the direct route of Monroe Avenue, changed
before it was opened to the East Avenue route by a group who desired to locate the
bridge just above the main falls, a move Col. Rochester stopped only after the
road was partly opened, thus explaining the indirect approach to the bridge.

9 "Reminiscences of Enos Stone," in Turner, Phelps and Gorham s Purchase, pp.
424-425, 584; John Kelsey, The Lives and Reminiscences of the Pioneers of (
Rochester and Western New York (Rochester, 1854) , pp. 7-9.

10 Turner, p. 585; Annah B. Yates, "Early Rochester Families," No. LIV,
Rochester Post-Express, July 22, 1911.

32 THE WATER-POWER CITY

upper rapids six miles over a rough road to King s Landing or four
miles further to the river s mouth. 11 The wide bow in the river joined
with the steep right bank at the lower falls to favor the western side as
a portage route, while the advantage of a shorter carry from the rapids
east to the Irondequoit landing, where John Tryon s store still enjoyed
a moderate trade, 12 was offset by the sand bar which already restrained
lake vessels from entering the bay. Thus it was on the west bank of the
river that the trading settlements developed, though a peculiar com
bination of circumstances made it difficult to determine the most favor
able site for the future town.

While the landing below the lower falls doubtless offered great ad
vantages, the high mortality among the Kings and the Grangers who
struggled for almost a decade to establish Fall Town turned newcomers
to rival sites, 13 notably to the dry west bank at the mouth of the river.
William Hincher, with a son and seven daughters, had located there
in the winter of 1792, building a log house which occasionally afforded
shelter to travelers; 14 but it was in 1805, when Samuel Latta arrived
as first customs agent for the Port of the Genesee and land agent for
the Pulteney Estate properties in the area, that trade prospects bright
ened. A wharf was constructed, a store and additional cabins appeared,
and fifty town lots were laid out and priced at ten dollars each in order
to attract settlers to the village named Charlotte. 15

Though the customs receipts for 1805 totalled only $22.50, a rapid
increase occurred when the Embargo shunted trade down the Genesee.
Shipments, valued at $30,000 in 1806, jumped by 1808 to $100,000
worth of wheat, pork, whiskey, and potash. Fifteen schooners and open
boats, capable of carrying from twenty-five to seventy tons each, tacked
back and forth between the various American and Canadian lake ports
at the latter date. 16 Several lake boats were built on the lower river in

11 Horatio G. Spafford, Gazetteer of the State of New York (1813), p. 136.

^Tryon Account Books (1800-1805), MSS, Roch. Hist. Soc. The entries under
the names of 122 customers show a frequent sale of lead, powder, salt, potash,
lye, "clove water," tobacco, and whiskey, the last being the most frequent article
of sale. See Ontario Repository, July ii, 1809, for an announcement of the sale
of the "late John Tryon s" estate of 315 acres in Boyle which mentions a warehouse
on Irondequoit Creek, and two partially improved farms equipped with dwelling
houses, barns, a distillery, and orchards containing, over 300 apple trees. See also
A. Emerson Babcock, "The City of Tryon and Vicinity," R. H. S., Pub., I, 117-118.

13 See above, p. 24.

14 Turner, Phelps and Gorham s Purchase, pp. 410-413; O Reilly, Sketches of
Rochester, p. 244; Emma M. P. Greer, "Home Builders of Old Charlotte," R. H, S.,
Pub., XI, 245-248. Mrs. Greer quotes a journal of Donald McKenzie, husband of
one of Hincher s daughters.

"Campbell, DeWitt Clinton, p. 113; Greer, "Home Builder," p* 250. See the
town plat of Charlotte, Greer, p. 244.

16 Greer, "Home Builders," p. 248; T[homas] C[ooper], Ride to Niagara, p, 32;
Augustus Porter, "Early Navigation on the Lakes," Buffalo Hist, Soc., Pub., VII,

LOWER GENESEE SETTLEMENTS 33

these years/ 7 and an active commerce developed between Tryon Town
and Latta s wharf, as the produce of the interior settlers was trans
ported from Irondequoit Landing in shallow boats, poled along the
shore and into the Genesee, for transfer to lake vessels. 18

By 1 8 10, the village of Charlotte with its nineteen houses had at
tracted the interest of several enterprising merchants. 19 One arrived with
"a handsome assortment of dry goods and groceries/ 7 which he proposed
to exchange for pot and pearl ashes and white oak staves, while two
rival forwarding companies established warehouses and announced rate
schedules for their schooners to both Queenstown and Montreal. 20
Jonathan Child, destined to figure prominently in Rochester s early his
tory, opened a store at Charlotte and advertised a quantity of window
glass. 21 John Mastick moved down from Canandaigua to open a law
office, and James Wadsworth purchased a central lot in the village. 22

The growth of trade stimulated renewed activity at several other
points on the lower Genesee. When the seven Hanford brothers from
Rome, New York, took up the work at Fall Town, a store was opened, 23
and trade prospects soon made Hanford s Landing a serious rival to
Charlotte. 24 Curiously enough, the Guide in the Wilderness, edited in
1 8 10 by Judge William Cooper of Cooperstown, listed "the first falls of
the Genesee, where there is a fine harbour for ships of two hundred tons"
as one of the most favorable town sites left undeveloped in the state. 25
The power resources of the area attracted some attention. Though the

317-322. On June 3, 1812, Joseph Ellicott wrote in his Letter Book: "I learn
that those who have any flour to carry to Canada from the mouth of the Genesee
River find no difficulty in carrying it whenever they choose. I begin to be of the
opinion that non-intercourse and embargo is all Stuff! Stuff! Stuff! Stuff! Stuff!"
Buffalo Hist, Soc.,,P&., XXVI, 148.

17 Porter, "Early Navigation," p. 322; E. P. Clapp, "Travel, Trade and Trans
portation of the Pioneers," MS, Roch. Hist. Soc., passim, mentions the Jemima,
Isabella, Genesee Packet, and the Clarissa as built on the lower Genesee or Iron
dequoit.

18 Clapp, "Travel, Trade and Transportation," pp. 84-85, goff.

19 Spafford, Gazetteer, p. 77 ; Turner, Phelps and Gorham s Purchase, pp. 514-

5iS.

20 Ontario Repository, Jan. 9, Oct. 16, 1810, Jan. i, Apr. 23, 1811.

21 Ontario Repository, Sept ri, 1810.

22 Ontario Repository, Mar. 19, 1811; "Deeds from Genesee County Records,"
I, 234, Monroe County Court House.

^Ontario Repository, Jan. 23, 1810. Frederick Hanford advertised a "well chosen
assortment of Dry Goods, Groceries, Hardware, and Crockery. Also Iron Hollow
Ware and Pot Ash Kettles; Window Glass, Sole Leather, Shoes, etc."

24 Ontario Repository, Dec. 18, 1810; P. P. Dickinson, "Steamboat Hotel,"
Samson Scrapbook, No. 52, pp. 11-12, Roch, Hist. Soc.; William F. Peck, Land
marks of Monroe County (Boston, 1895), p. 69.

25 Judge [William] Cooper, A Guide in the Wilderness, or the History of the
First Settlement in the Western Counties of New York (Dublin, j8io), p. 31,

34 THE WATER-POWER CITY

mills at the upper falls, abandoned in 1804 when Josiah Fish moved
away, stood in ruins, a half mile further north Charles Harford, an
Englishman of considerable means, erected a mill in 1808 on the west
bank overlooking the main falls. Built at a cost of one thousand dollars
and operated by a tub wheel, the small mill served the neighborhood s
moderate needs until 1810 when Harford, discouraged by the difficult
portage from the rapids above and to the landing below, 26 sold his
2oo-acre mill site to Thomas Mumford of Cayuga Bridge and Matthew
and Francis Brown of Rome. 27 Another settlement had appeared by this
time on the west bank at the upper rapids where boats coming down
the river were sometimes forced to unload. A tavern operated by Isaac
Castle served travelers for a few years, but the site, ambitiously desig
nated Castle Town, failed to justify the hopes of its promoter, James
Wadsworth. 28

The lower Genesee still had the appearance of a neglected wilderness
when, in the summer of 1809, Midshipman James Fenimore Cooper,
sailing westward on Lake Ontario with a half-dozen companions, was
driven by a sudden squall to seek shelter in the mouth of the river. The
hungry crewmen were creating near-famine conditions wherever they
landed on the sparsely settled shore between Oswego and Niagara. Near
the Genesee they found a small log hut where they procured some bread,
milk and two pies. The next day, after buying a sheep for a half eagle
from a settler further inland, they rejoiced when a shift in the wind
favored a renewal of their journey. 29

A more experienced traveler, Thomas Cooper, from Pennsylvania,
judged Allan s old location, which he found that spring in "perfect
ruins," as "the best site for a mill I ever saw," while Harford s location
was likewise described as a "perfectly secure mill seat." The grandeur
of the natural amphitheater created by the falls roused this visitor s
enthusiasm, but the chief activity observed on the river was that of a
half-dozen men fishing in the gorge below the lower falls. 80

That there was something more than good fishing at the Genesee falls
was evident from the increasing interest shown in the region. Wheat,
which commanded only 12^ cents a bushel in produce at Geneva, sold
for 31 cents in cash at Charlotte. 81 DeWitt Clinton, intensely interested

^Turner, Phelps and Gorham s Purchase, p. 584; T[homas] C Cooper], Ride to
Niagara, p. 28. Scrantom, "Old Citizen s Letters," p. 2, gives a description of this
mill.

27 Turner, p. 592.

28 Turner, p. 580; R. LaRue Cober, Castle Town: An Historiette of Southwest
Rochester (Genesee Baptist Church, Rochester, 1935).

28 James Fenimore Cooper, Lives of Distinguished American Naval Officers
(Auburn, 1846), II, 1317-134.

80 T[homas] C Cooper], Ride to Niagara, pp. 27-33.
81 Turner, Phelps and Gorham s Purchase, p. 503.

LOWER GENESEE SETTLEMENTS 35

in such matters, was careful to note on his visit in July, i8io ; that 1,000
barrels each of flour, pork, and potash, and 100,000 staves had already
been shipped that season to Montreal. 32 A week or so later an anonymous
visitor remarked that "the timber of this country must be carried down
the St. Lawrence; it never will pay for transportation to the Atlantic by
any other route." **

Information of this sort prompted James Wadsworth to inquire in
1810 about the possibility of purchasing the mill seat at the upper
falls. 84 Wadsworth already had large interests in the commercial po
tentialities of the lower Genesee. In his wide ranging land speculations,
the founder of Geneseo had acquired a 6o,ooo-acre tract only six miles
west of Fall Town, as a handbill of 1809 announced, 35 and he saw
clearly that a mill town of considerable importance was destined to
arise at the falls.

COLONEL ROCHESTER S SETTLEMENT

But the choice site the zoo-acre mill lot so lightly given to Ebenezer
Allan two decades before had already fallen by a queer stroke of
chance into the hands of three Maryland speculators. Williamson s pro
motion of the Pulteney Estate had prompted Charles Carroll, William
Fitzhugh, and Nathaniel Rochester to journey northward in 1800 along
the Susquehanna and Williamson s road to view the Genesee Country.
They came again in 1803, carefully selecting several large tracts, chiefly
in the southern part of the territory, but just before concluding their
second visit a friend at Canandaigua persuaded them to examine the
mill seat on the lower Genesee. Though the sawmill had already been
washed out by the flood of 1800, and the gristmill suffered from neglect,
the three prospectors saw the potentialities of the site and j@intly signed

82 Campbell, DeWitt Clinton, p. 113.

88 Samson Scrapbook, No. 40, p. 95, quoting a letter printed in the Albany
Ballance and State Journal in 1811, but dated from the mouth of the Genesee,
July 27, 1810.

84 Turner, p. 587: "I wish that tract of 100 acres could be purchased of the
Maryland gentlemen. The Bridge and Mill seat render it very valuable indeed."
Three years previous, Wadsworth had already noted the possibilities for trade at
Fall Town: "I could now purchase to be delivered at Fall Town, TO,OOO bushels
of wheat at 50 cents. It could then be ground and sent to Montreal for 75 cents
per barrel. Our field ashes which are now wasted, would be an object of con
siderable consequence." Turner, p. 581.

85 "Vessels of 200 tons, sail from Lake Ontario up the Genesee river to the
lower falls; this place is called Fall-town Landing, and is only six miles from the
tract now offered for sale. A barrel of flour can now be sent from Fall-town
Landing to Montreal for one dollar, and a barrel of pot-ashes for one dollar and
a half; these prices will be reduced, as the business of transportation increases.
Most articles of American product command as high prices at Montreal as at
New York." Samson Scrapbook, No. 51, p. 100.

3 6 THE WATER-POWER CITY

a contract for its purchase at $17.50 an acre. 86 Content with their specu
lative ventures, these gentlemen forthwith returned to their Maryland
homes to await a time when the advancing settlers would increase the
value of their holdings and make the neighborhood congenial to their
womenfolk. 37

When in 1810 Colonel Rochester, already in his fifty-ninth year,
finally determined to move to the Genesee Country, it was to the settle
ment at Dansville, conveniently located on the southern trade route,
that he led the way. A caravan of three great Conestoga wagons, two
carriages, and numerous saddle horses transported his wife and eleven
children, as well as several slaves and other servants, over the long,
tedious journey to the frontier. Rochester s commercial and industrial
affairs in Hagerstown had qualified him for similar projects in Dansville,
and there he soon had a flour mill, sawmill, paper mill, stillhouse, black
smith s shop, and village store in full operation and the work of clear
ing a 45o-acre farm well started. 88 In the midst of these activities
Colonel Rochester thought at one time of withdrawing from the lower
Genesee venture, but after due consideration he found time to make
occasional visits to the falls, forty miles down the valley to the north. 89
It was fortunate that he could spare this attention, for neither of his
partners had as yet migrated from Maryland, 40 and developments were
progressing so rapidly on the lower Genesee that further neglect of the
mill lot might have given the advantage to one of the rival town sites. 41

* [Nathaniel Rochester], "A Brief Sketch of the Life of Nathaniel Rochester,"
R. H. S., Pub., Ill, 305-313. See also the collection of materials on Colonel
Rochester and his family assembled in R. H. S., Pub., Ill, 355-388, A copy of the
contract for the purchase of the loo-acre tract, signed Nov. 8, 1803 (MS in On
tario County Historical Society, Canandaigua, N. Y.) is printed in Rochester
History, I, No. 4 5 21-22. The best account of Col. Rochester s part in the founding
of the village is that of Howard L. Osgood, "Rochester: Its Founders and Its
Founding," R. H. S., Pub., I, 53-70.

S7 Charles Carroll to Col. Rochester, Williamsburgh, July 8, 1817, Rochester
Letters, MS, Roch. Hist. Soc. Carroll recalls that it was "the want of money"
rather than the "expectation we were to settle" at the falls that prompted the
sale of the zoo-acre tract in 1803 by the Pulteney agent, Col. Robert Troup.

88 Ontario Repository, Dec. 26, 1809; Sept. 4, 1810; Apr. 7, xSix; Aug. 13,
1813; Rochester Letters, 1807-1813; OntaHo Messenger, Aug. 10, 1813.

m Col. Rochester to Charles Carroll, Dansville, 1811, quoted in R. H. S., Pub.,
I, 63.

^Carroll and Fitzhugh had in ( i8oo jointly purchased 12,000 acres of land
on Canaseraga Creek in the towns of Groveland and Sparta, to which they moved
in 1816. Turner, Phelps and Gorham s Purchase, p. 365; Osgood, "Rochester: Its
Founders," pp. 55-56.

41 Wm. Fitzhugh to Col. Rochester, Washington Co., Md., Oct. 18, 1812,
Rochester Letters. Fitzhugh, from distant Maryland, felt secure in the advantages
of their site: "The public road and the Bridge at the Falls of the Genesee will
greatly add to the value of our Interests there . . . and although improvements
are making near it its natural advantages are so great it can receive no material
Injury from them."

LOWER GENESEE SETTLEMENTS 37

Enos Stone was already at work building a crude sawmill on the east
bank near the upper falls when Colonel Rochester rode down in 1811 to
survey the 100 acres into town lots. The construction of the bridge was
delayed for the want of suitable boards, but the progress of Stone s saw
mill promised one solution, while the plans of the Brown brothers for
the reconstruction of Harford s mills foretold an abundance of timber
for the houses of the prospective settlers as well as an ample supply of
flour for their ovens. 42 Colonel Rochester accordingly engaged Enos
Stone to serve as agent for the lots advertised for sale in the Canandaigua
papers that fall. 43

A southern rather than New England inspiration for the town ap
peared in the generous provision for highways and their gridiron pattern,
as well as in the absence of a public common. 44 Two broad streets were
staked out, each six rods wide. One of these, appropriately named
Buffalo Street, extended westward from the bridge, while the other ran
north and south, crossing the former at a main four corners a short
distance from the bridge. Quarter-acre lots on these business streets were
offered at $50 each, except for the choice northwest lot at the Four
Corners which was priced at $200. Several additional streets, each four
rods in width, were laid out, and $30 asked for lots on these back streets.
Five-dollar down payments secured the lots to prospective buyers, on
condition that a house or shop 20 by 1 6 feet in size be erected by
October, 1812, for only those ready to put their shoulders to the wheel
of progress were wanted in the projected village. 45 One large central plot
was reserved for a court house, indicating that Colonel Rochester had
the future possibilities of his settlement in mind, while the section along
the river south of the bridge was left undivided until plans could be
perfected for an improved raceway and the mill lots surveyed. 46

Enos Stone proved an admirable choice as local agent for the new
settlement. Lacking the resources to develop his own holdings east of
the river, he wisely concluded that the value of his land would be

42 Turner, Phelps and Gorham s Purchase, p. 593.
^Ontario Repository, Aug. 20, 1811.

44 See the plat of Rochesterville, Plate III, No. 2.

45 Letter from Rochester to Enos Stone, Dansville, Aug. 14, 1811, in Turner,
p. 587.

46 Rochester had numerous predecessors as town planners in Western New York.
It is therefore interesting to compare his plan with those of Williamson for Geneva
and Bath; Phelps for Canandaigua, and Joseph Ellicott for Batavia and Buffalo.
That for Buffalo was the most ambitious and reflects the influence of the plan
for Washington, D. C., with which Ellicott had some association, hut all save
Rochester were built around a public square. All the plats provided spacious
house lots and broad main streets to permit the easy movement of horsedrawn
vehicles. See Turpin C. Bannister, "Early Town Planning in New York State,"
New York History, XXIV (April, 1943)* I9 i-i92j Survey of Annin and Barton
of the Geneva Plat, about 1795, MS in Steuben County Clerk s Office, Bath, N. Y.

38 THE WATER-POWER CITY

greatly enhanced by a thriving village on the opposite bank. Moreover,
the work of constructing his sawmill, building a second frame house,
and tending a six-acre corn patch kept him engaged at the upper falls,
where he was sure to be available in case prospective settlers should
appear. 47 Indeed, many land hunters, scouting for favorable locations
throughout western New York, Ohio, and Indiana Territory, were
prompted by the threat of war on the more exposed frontier to visit
the Genesee falls, where Enos Stone interested several of them in the
advantages of Colonel Rochester s projected village. 48 Abelard Reynolds
was on such a scouting expedition when he stopped at the falls en route
to Charlotte early in 1812. Despite the encouraging prospects of pre
viously visited town sites, none impressed Reynolds so favorably as this,
and before returning east two lots were contracted for. 49 Thus, by the
end of the settlement s birth year, a dozen lots had been disposed of by
Colonel Rochester and his agent. 50

Though a few settlers of respectable means were to locate at the falls
during the early years, central figures in the pageantry of Rochester s
development were the humble miller, Hamlet Scrantom, and his family.
Indeed, Scrantom was sufficiently characteristic of his fellow townsmen
to merit the honor later conferred on him as the pioneer settler. 51 Born
in Durham, Connecticut, he had migrated with other pioneers to Turin,
New York, but the heavy snows of the Black River Country prompted
him to seek a new home on the Genesee. After a visit to the falls in
March, i8i2, 52 at which time he contracted for a house lot and made
arrangements to occupy a cabin already under construction, Hamlet
returned to fetch his family from Turin as soon as the winter drifts
should disappear. 53 It was the 2oth of April before the start could be
made, but finally the heavy wagon was loaded with provisions and
household articles and covered with a linen cloth for protection.
Mrs. Scrantom climbed aboard with her two daughters and four sons,
while her husband started the two oxen and the lead horse on the
175-mile journey to their new home.

Passing through the flourishing village of Canandaigua on the ninth

4T Scrantom, "Old Citizen s Letters," p, 2 ; O Reilly, Sketches of Rochester, p. 350.

48 Enos Stone to Nathaniel Rochester, Sept. 13, 1811, Oct. 31, x8u, Dec. 19,
1 8 it, June 30, 1812, Rochester Letters.

49 Abelard Reynolds, "Autobiography," Rochester Post-Express, Sept. 23, 1884;
Kelsey, Lives and Reminiscences, pp. 57, 100.

50 Nathaniel Rochester s Cash Book for Sale of Lots in the loo-Acre Tract, MS,
Roch. Hist. Soc.

51 Pioneer Assoc. of Rochester, Record Book, and Scrapbook. Hamlet Scrantom
was elected first president of this "organization on its establishment in 1847 ; Kelsey,
Lives and Reminiscences, p. 9.

^Nathaniel Rochester s Cash Book.

188 Hamlet Scrantom to Abraham Scrantom, Turin, Apr, 18, 1812, R. H. S., Pub.,
VII, 172-173,

LOWER GENESEE SETTLEMENTS 39

day, Hamlet Scrantom no doubt read with concern editor James Bemis s
forebodings of war with Canada, while his wife possibly yearned for
one of the straw bonnets in Miss Peck s shop near the schoolhouse. 54
But they continued their journey, and on the eleventh day the weary
migrants drew up at the rapids opposite Castle s tavern and were soon
ferried across to the west bank. The next day, May ist, Scrantom and
his sons tramped through a light snow down to the upper falls, where
they found their cabin home standing roofless in the center of a swampy
and desolate five-acre clearing. The framework of the bridge was suf
ficiently completed to permit them to cross to the east bank, where
Enos Stone, eager to engage an experienced miller for his almost com
pleted sawmill, provided temporary shelter in his abandoned shanty.
By July 4th, the Scrantoms were able to move into the new cabin (on
the site of the Powers Building), the first permanent residents in Colonel
Rochester s settlement at the falls. 55

THE HAZAIO>S OF

Disquieting news of the outbreak of hostilities had reached the Genesee
scarcely two weeks before. 56 The prospect of war had long been a subject
of bitter controversy. The bold policies of frontier Republicans had
generally carried the majority in recent elections, sending the War Hawk,
Peter B. Porter, to Congress as representative for the Western District
in i8io/ 7 yet popular sentiment was by no means united in approval of
war. The widespread activities of the Friends of Peace found support
in Ontario County, with several settlers on the lower Genesee taking
part in the agitation. 58 As the threat of hostilities increased, interest in
the traditional militia days revived, 59 but the political repercussions
proved unfavorable for the Jeffersonian-Republicans, who lost to the
Federal-Republicans in November, i8i2. 60

54 Ontario Repository, Apr. 21, 1812; Hamilton, The Country Printer, pp. 72-
73, 83-84, 258.

^Scrantom, "Old Citizen s Letters," pp. 1-2; Edward R. Foreman, "First
Families of Rochester and Their Dwellings," R. H. S., Pub., IV, 349-35*-

86 Ontario Repository, June 30, 1812.

m Ontario Repository, Jan. 28, 1812. In spite of, his oft-repeated disapproval of
the war talk, Bemis prints at length the speech of Congressman Porter in Washing
ton on Dec, 30, 1811; Dictionary of American Biography, XV, 99-100.

68 Ontario Repository, Sept. 15, 1812. Ezra Patterson and Oliver Culver repre
sented Boyle in a Peace Convention in Canandaigua pn Sept. 10, 1812. See also
W. H. Goodman, "The Origins of the War of 1812: A Survey of Changing In
terpretations," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XXVIII (Sept., 1941).

m Myron Holley to George Newbold, Aug. 20, 1807, MS at TJniv. Roch.; Ow-
tario Repository, Jan. 30, 1810; Barton, Early Reminiscences, pp. 56760.

60 Ontario Repository, Dec. 22, 1812. Despite the efforts of the Federalists to
appropriate the name "Republican," the Jeffersonians were successful in retaining
that title.

40 THE WATER-POWER CITY

On the lower Genesee the Federalists had generally held the majority. 61
Only in the May, 1812, election of state legislators did the Jeffersonians
carry the town of Boyle, 156 to I52. 62 Six months later the vote was
reversed, 224 to 92, and the Federalists likewise carried Ontario
County, 3250 to 2229. The town across the river turned Federalist, 44
to 23, although the staunch Jeffersonians of Genesee and Niagara
Counties retained reduced majorities. 63 Indeed, in face of shifting
fortunes of war, the exposed settlements near the Niagara maintained
their Jeffersonian allegiance, while the Genesee settlers, impatient for
the renewal of peaceful trade, joined with the Federalists of Canandaigua
and Bloomfield in agitating for peace. 64

Despite the war s outbreak, activity at the Genesee falls increased as
the summer of 1812 advanced. The workmen returned to finish the
bridge, and with the building of a log causeway over the marshy stretch
of the road to Pittsford, a highway to the east was at last available.
Young Jehiel Barnard, a tailor from Rome, claimed the honor of being
the first new settler to use this improved road in September, 1812, but
the traffic was soon greatly augmented. 65 Scrantom kept busy sawing
boards for the bridge and for several lot holders who were endeavoring
to get their houses built within the prescribed time limit, though ap
parently none of the other first families arrived before the next spring.
Scrantom s oxen were kept equally busy dragging logs to the mill and
hauling heavy loads to and from the landing below the falls. 60 Abelard
Reynolds, the first to complete a frame house on the loo-acre tract,
brought his family from Pittsfield, Massachusetts, in February, 1813,
opening the village post office and pioneer saddlery on the site later
occupied by the Reynolds Arcade. 67

The accommodations afforded by Isaac W. Stone s tavern on the east
bank and by Enos Stone s shack and other pioneer buildings soon proved
inadequate for the number of workmen and prospective lot buyers con
gregating at the falls. The Scrantoms took in boarders at $1.75 a week,

61 Ontario Repository, May 10, 1803, May 9, 1809, May 8, 1810.
02 Ontario Repository, June 2, 1812.
68 Ontario Repository, Dec. 22, 29, 1812; Mar. 9, 1813,

64r Ontario Repository, May 13, June 22, 1813; May xo, Nov. 29, 1814; Feb. 14,
May 9, 1815.

65 Moses Atwater to Samuel J, Andrews, Canandaigua, Oct. 28, 1812, Atwater-
Andrews Letter, 1812-1814 (Rochester, 1914). For Barnard s claim see Scrantom,
"Old Citizen s Letters," p. 2 ; Amy H. CrougMon, "The Scrantoms and Barnards
in Rochester," R. H. S., Pub., IX, 237.

66 Hamlet Scranton, Day Book, pp. 39-45. Scrantom sawed a total of 35,827
feet for Enos Stone up to Dec. 29, 1812. Isaac W. Stone, Abelard Reynolds, Cobb,
Hanford, Marshall, Oliver Culver, and Carter were other names in his lumber ac
count for 1812. Scrantom received 8 shillings a day for the services of his team
of oxen.

67 Amy H. Croughton, "Historic Reynolds Arcade," R. H. S,, Pub., VIII, 97-99;
Abelard Reynolds, "Autobiography," Rochester Po$tExpre$s r Sept. 23, 1884.

LOWER GENESEE SETTLEMENTS 41

especially after the completion of their frame house in December pro
vided more comfortable facilities. 68 James Wadsworth came down in
August, 1812, stopping for twelve days in the Scrantom cabin/ 9 and in
September Colonel Rochester and his lady visited the settlement,
prompting Mrs. Scrantom to bustle about and prepare tea for her
guests. 70 Young Francis Brown, too busy reconstructing the Harford
mill to complete his large house overlooking the main falls, was a fre
quent guest. 71 Moses Atwater came over from Canandaigua to examine
the mill seat on the east bank at the main falls. 72 Galloping messengers of
the military forces stationed along the frontier brought moments of
worried excitement, but an unusually heavy winter served practically
to isolate the tiny hamlet.

Except for the threatening appearance of British war vessels off the
Genesee late in i8i2, 73 the danger of invasion did not appear as a real
menace to the settlement at the falls that year. The marauding bear or
the coiled rattlesnake still provided more imminent hazards. 74 Neighbor
ing Indians frequently occasioned uneasy thoughts to lonely housewives
who could not forget the events of the frontier of their childhood, though
the numerous youngsters in the settlement had already found some of
the Indian games to be great sport, notably that of sliding down the hill
overlooking the main falls on long strips of bark. 75 The most serious
effect of the war on the struggling community during the first winter
was the extent to which the scant food supplies were drained off to feed
the army. 76 Wheat rose to a dollar a bushel, and even at that price
Scrantom had to drive sixteen miles, from one farmhouse to another, in
search of five bushels to meet the needs of his busy household. 77 Fortu-

68 Hamlet Scrantom to Abraham Scrantom, Rochester, Feb. 7, 1813, R. H. S.,
Pub., VII, 177.

69 Hamlet Scrantom, Day fiook, p. 44.

70 Scrantom, "Old Citizen s Letters," pp. 26-27.

71 "Old Citizen s Letters," p. 3 ; Turner, Phelps and Gorham s Purchase, p. 593.

72 Atwater-Andrews Letters, Moses Atwater to Samuel J. Andrews, Canandaigua,
Oct. n, 1812, and passim.

7a Rear Admiral Franklin Hanford, "Visits of American and British Naval Ves
sels to the Genesee River," R. H. S., Pub., Ill, 41-42; Ontario Repository, Sept. 15,
Oct. 6, 1812.

74 Scrantom, "Old Citizen s Letters," pp. 14, 23-24, 35-36; R. H. S., Pub., XI,
348-35i The settlers contributed their share of enlistments to the army on the
Niagara. See letters to Col. Rochester from his sons, William B. and John C. while
on military service, Aug. i8i3~May, 1815, MSS, Univ. Roch.

75 Scrantom, "Old Citizen s Letters," p. 58.

76 Augustus Porter to Col. Rochester, Nov. 16, 1812; Underhill and Seymour
to Col. Rochester, Dec. 10, 1812, Rochester Letters, Roch. Hist. Soc. Blanket
orders for as much flour as he can deliver at Buffalo are here sent to Col. Roches
ter at Dansville.

77 Hamlet Scrantom to Abraham Scrantom, Rochester, Feb. 7, 1813, R. H. S.,
Pub., VII, 177.

42 THE WATER-POWER CITY

nately a good hunting season helped to tide the community over until
spring. 7 *

<

The succeeding year (in spite of a taste of both victory and disaster
on the more-exposed frontier) brought continued growth to the falls
settlement. On June i6 ? 1813, Sir James Yeo, "commodore" of the
British squadron of eight vessels, anchored off the mouth of the Genesee
and seized "between four and five hundred barrels of flour, pork, etc.
together with a large boat laden with 1,200 bushels of corn destined for
our troops at Niagara." 79 George Latta, younger brother of Samuel and
clerk in charge of these government stores, was courteously provided
with a receipt for the spoils. A force of militia arrived the next day in
time to shout defiance at the departing fleet, and no injury was suffered
by the villagers during the overnight occupation, but the prospects of
Charlotte were seriously clouded, prompting many of the settlers to flee
inland. 80 Nearly three months later a running skirmish occurred off
the Genesee between the rival Ontario fleets, with ten American vessels
under "Commodore" Isaac Chauncey in pursuit of Yeo s smaller
squadron. Unfortunately the greater speed of the Canadians prevented
Chauncey from duplicating Perry s decisive victory on Lake Erie the
previous day. 81 American confidence, already stimulated as General
Dearborn and his successors carried the fighting across the Niagara
into Canada, was greatly enhanced by these naval engagements.

Back on the Genesee the demand for supplies boosted prices, attract
ing merchants from more exposed situations to the settlement at the
upper falls where a spirit of optimism held sway. 82 Loads of produce

78 Scrantom, "Old Citizen s Letters," p, 58.

79 Ontario Repository, June 22, 1813.

^Hanford, "Visits of American and British Naval Vessels," pp. 42-45.

^Ontario Repository, Sept. 14, 1813; Hanford, pp. 46-53. Chauncey had two
ships, one brig, and seven schooners with a total tonnage of 2402, and 865 men,
but he could only throw a broadside of 1288 Ibs.; while Yeo with two ships, two
brigs, two schooners, and 770 men could throw a broadside of 1374 Ibs., according
to Theodore Roosevelt, The Naval War of 1812 (6th ed.; New York, 1897), pp.
243-245.

^Abelard Reynolds to William H. Moseley, Jan. 14, 1813, quoted in The His
torical Magazine and Notes and Queries Concerning the Antiquities, History and
Biography of America, III (1859), *$6. "I should be pleased to see you at this place
[Rochester] whenever it may suit your convenience, and I think for an enter
prising young man there is no place within the scope of my knowledge, that pre
sents greater advantages than this, and as soon as the War is over, none in my
opinion will advance more rapidly in importance. Truly it is now, rather a for
bidding place in its appearance. I live in a log hut, and there are some half a
dozen within a half a mile of me. Mr. Ely from Pittsfield is here and thinks of
erecting a mill, the water privileges being very extensive, perhaps no greater water
power in the State. Indeed, we feel that this will ultimately be an important sec
tion of our country. I have only to repeat, I would recommend you to come hither
as soon as you get through with your studies."

LOWER GENESEE SETTLEMENTS 43

arrived by wagon from the east and by boat from the farms up the
valley. 83 Several new houses appeared at the falls, and Abelard
Reynolds worked long hours to fill the militia orders at his saddlery. 84
When Silas O. Smith, formerly located at Hanford s Landing, erected
a store at the Four Corners, Ira West, formerly at Bloomfield, moved
in to take charge. 85 Francis Brown got his mill in operation and ac
cumulated 4000 bushels of wheat at $1.25 in anticipation of rising
prices. Hamlet Scrantom was able to write home with considerable
optimism on December 2, 1813:

The Village is flourishing beyond all calculation, property has risen one
half, that is the lots. Last year at this time I had one Neighbor in the village,
now I have ten, that is, there are eleven families, all compact, every lot on
the main street is taken up & a number of back lots & there must be at least
twenty houses built next summer. There is a number of men of large prop
erty have bought here, every kind of mechanical business is good & money is
plenty. ...

The people are very industrious here & continue to put up buildings. In
a few days we have to raise a very large store-house for Capt. Brown, 3
stories high on an eight foot stone wall, calculated to require one hundred
men to raise it. ...

If there is any mechanic among you that wishes to come to the western
country I can recommend this place. . . .

Possibly some one may come on this winter, if that is the case & you can
procure a smaU keg of oysters for me I should be glad, they are brought
here every winter but bear a high price. 86

But before the end of the month the disastrous retreat of the Ameri
can forces, the capture of Fort Niagara, and the burning in quick suc
cession of Black Rock and Buffalo spread misery and terror throughout
the frontier. 87 The settlement at the falls was swollen for a time by
refugees, but the pell-mell flight soon carried most of them further in
land, together with some of the villagers themselves. Scrantom reloaded

^Charks Carroll, Journal and Observations of Chas. Carroll of B[elle View]
on a Tour to examine the distilleries & paper Mills of the Eastern States (1814),
Rochester Letters. "Boats of 300 Barrels burthen go from Hermitage to the falls
of Genisee." Pioneer Assoc. Record Book. In 1850 Gideon Cobb recalled that m

1813 he had piloted a boatload of fruit from Irondequoit to Sackett s Harbor,
and in the succeeding winter operated a four-ox team hauling provisions to and
from the mouth of the river and the settlement at the bridge.

* Abelard Reynolds, "Autobiography," Rochester Post-Express, Sept. 23, 1884.
85 R. H. S., Pub., X, 196, quotes from the reminiscences of Silas 0. Smith; see
his obituary in Peck s Scrapbook, p. i.

86 Hamlet Scrantom to Abraham Scrantom, Rochester, Dec. 2, 1813, R. H. b.,

^^James^Idsworth to Mr. Richardson and Col. Rochester, Geneseo, Jan. 3,

1814 MS, Univ. Roch.; Robert W. Bingham, The Cradle of the Queen City (Buf
falo, 1931, Buffalo Hist. Soc., Pub., vol. XXXI), pp. 3i8-337-

44 THE WATER-POWER CITY

his ox cart and moved his family to a cabin in the hills southeast of the
village where he had recently bought a small farm, while Captain
Isaac W. Stone of the local militia sent his children to Bloomfield, safe
in the interior. However, as the village was soon crowded with militia
gathering from near-by settlements for the march to Niagara, courage
revived. 88

Sure progress was made even during these troubled days. Huldah
Strong, who had accompanied her sister, Mrs. Reynolds, when Abelard
moved his family to the falls early in 1813, gathered the children of the
neighborhood together late that year in the pioneer school, meeting
part of the time in the room over Jehiel Barnard s tailor shop. 89 Plans
were laid in December for the construction of a district schoolhouse the
next spring, but Silas 0. Smith, who cleared the lot back of his store,
where the court hoijse and school were to be erected, earned the privilege
of raising a crop of wheat there that summer, and the construction of
the schoolhouse of Gates District No. 2 had to wait the harvest. Never
theless, the fall season found the settlement well equipped for its educa
tional responsibilities. 90

The room over Barnard s tailor shop likewise housed the first re
ligious meetings when the Reverend Daniel Brown rode over from
Pittsford on several occasions to conduct Baptist services. 01 The first
physician, Dr. Jonah Brown/ 2 and the first lawyer, John Mastick, 03
settled at the falls during these years, as did the first blacksmith and
toolmaker, James B. Carter. Hamlet Scrantom, seeking a rest from
the long hours and heavy labor of the sawmill, erected a bake oven
and established a grocery or dram shop to supply the accommodations
so characteristic of frontier villages.

. East of the river land speculation was the order of the day. Several
attempts to buy portions of Enos Stone s farm were unsuccessful,
though Abelard Reynolds, by trading an improved farm on the Black
River for the zoo-acre forest lot adjoining Stone on the northeast,
secured at $5 an acre land that was later to prove of great value. 94
South of Stone the river lots, divided into 3 2 -acre plots, were disposed
of at from $8 to $30 an acre, and here Scrantom and Carter acquired

88 Hamlet Scrantom to Abraham Scrantom, Rochester, Dec, 26, 1811, R H S
Pub., VII, 182-184. * "

89 Blake McKelvey, "On the Educational Frontier," R. H. S., Pub., XVII, 8-9.
^McKelvey, "Educational Frontier," pp. 9-10; Hamlet Scrantom to Abraham

Scrantom, Rochester, Dec, 2, 1813, Jan, 24, 1815, R. H. S., Pub., VII, 180, 190,

91 Annah B. Yates, "Early Rochester Family Records," No. XXIII, Rochester
Post-Express, Dec. 3, 1910.

92 Betsey C. Corner, "A Century of Medicine in Rochester," R. H. S., Pub.,
XIII, 322-324; Kelsey, Lives and Reminiscences, p. 19,

* Ontario Repository, Dec. 6, 1814; John D. Lynn, "Life and Times of John
Mastick," R. H. S., Pub., VII, 118-121.
w Reynolds, "Autobiography."

LOWER GENESEE SETTLEMENTS 45

valuable titles. 95 Moses Atwater of Canandaigua purchased 32 acres on
the river north of the Stone farm, paying $1000 for the plot with its
command of the water rights on the east bank at the main falls, but
his plans for its development were deferred by the war. 96 Atwater
was so enthusiastic over the venture that he wished to form a company
able to invest "20 thousand dollars or more in real property contiguous
to those falls." 97 It seemed desirable to acquire the tract between his
site and the bridge, but the best offer Enos Stone would make was
fifteen acres at $150 an acre not including the one-acre lots at the
bridge already valued at $1000 each.* 8 Atwater, kept busy with the
affairs of the newly established bank in Canandaigua as well as with his
judicial duties at the county seat, was impatient for the arrival of his
Connecticut associates in the mill-site venture, urging them to bring
along their daughters to join his own, as "we have a good school" in
Canandaigua."

There was a crisis in Rochester s affairs at this time of which the
settlers had no inkling. As several of the lot holders were completing
their payments, the approaching necessity for registering the deeds
prompted the proprietors to search their own title. It was quickly dis
covered that the several previous transfers had not been carefully re
corded, and frantic letters were exchanged between the principals. 100
William B. Rochester journeyed to Albany and then to New York in
an attempt to trace down the witnesses to the various transactions in
which the hundred-acre tract had been involved. 101 After much labor,
however, the necessary affidavits were collected and the title was
properly secured, admitted, and recorded in the Genesee County
records. 102

Fortunately the actual settlers knew nothing of these legal difficulties;
they were sufficiently worried by the uncertain military developments

95 Hamlet Scrantom to Abraham Scrantom, Brighton, Jan. 24, 1815, R. H. S.
Pub., VII, 189. Scrantom had bought at $8 an acre, paying $100 extra for the im
provements which included twelve acres cleared and fenced besides a small log
cabin. But already the value had jumped to $30 an acre for the unsold river lots.

96 Moses Atwater to Samuel J. Andrews, Oct. n, 28, Nov. 21, 1812, Atwater-
Andrews Letters. In addition to the mill seat, the associates bought three adjoining
lots along the river to the north at approximately $10 an acre, making a total
investment of $1856.

OT Same to same, Jan. 29, 1813.

08 Same to same, Mar. 27, 1813.

w Same to same, Mar. 30, 1813.

1<K) Charles Carroll to Col. Rochester, Jan. 7, 1814; William Fitzhugh to Col.
Rochester, Apr. 6, 1814, Rochester Letters.

10:1 William B. Rochester to Col. Rochester, Albany, June 20, 1814; same to
same, New York, June 27, 1814, Rochester Letters.

102 Joseph Fellows to Col. Rochester, Geneva, Aug. 20, 1814; Jan. 16, 1815,
Rochester Letters.

46 THE WATER-POWER CITY

on the none too distant frontier. As the snow melted up the valley and
the ice-choked river brought the first flood to the new settlement early
in i8i4, 108 the people became fearful of the military activities the
spring might unleash. Captain Stone set off for Albany to petition for
a company to be stationed at the mouth of the Genesee, for without
such protection the settlers "do not think it safe to go on with building
here next summer." 104

^

Unless the war could be quickly terminated of which there was
little prospect courageous action would be necessary to save the
settlement from disintegration. Already Colonel Rochester, in a canny
appeal to both the timid and the bold, had advertised his mills and
farm at Dansville for sale, declaring his desire "to remove toithe Village
of Rochester, at the Falls of the Genesee River." Though a favorable
price was received for the safe interior location, before Rochester could
complete arrangements to move to the falls, another milling enterprise
was launched there, prompting the Colonel to locate instead at Bloom-
field, nearly twenty miles southeast. 106

The new mill was that of Josiah Bissell and the Ely brothers, recent
arrivals from Massachusetts. Displaying an energy that was long to
characterize their efforts, these young men not only opened the second
store at the Four Corners, 106 but leased water privileges at the upper
falls, where they repaired Allan s old raceway and erected a sawmill as
well as the store in five weeks time. 107 Early in 1814 they acquired from
Fitzhugh and Carroll (then making a long delayed second visit to the
falls) 108 an additional lease granting permission to erect a gristmill
on the improved mill race. 109

108 Flood Committee, Flood Conditions in the Genesee River (Rochester, 1905),
PP. 4~5-

104 Hamlet Scrantom to Abraham Scrantom, Rochester, Feb. 19, 1814, R. H. S.,
Pub., VII, 185.

106 See his advertisement, Ontario Messenger, Aug. 10, 1813. Scrantom in a
letter to his father, Feb. 19, 1814, reports that Rochester received $24,000 for his
Dansville properties. He paid $12,728 for his isy-acre farm at Bloomfield, which
provides a clear contrast between improved land values along the state road and
the $5 to $12 an acre asked for unimproved land in the Rochester area. See On
tario County Deeds, Liber 24, p. 123, cited in R. H. S./ Pub., Ill, 382; also
Rochester Letters. Rochester s letters to and from Endress and Opp of Easton, Pa.,
discuss the sale of the remaining portion of his Dansville estate in 1813 and 1814.

106 Ontario Repository, Dec. 7, 1813. Hervey Ely advertised in addition to his
stock of "Dry Goods, Hard Ware, Groceries, Crockery, & Glassware" a "handsome
assortment of mahogony and gilt frame looking glasses." Ontario Repository, Dec.
13, 1814. Hervey Ely to Col. Rochester, Mar. 12, 1823, Rochester Letters.

107 Hamlet Scrantom to Abraham Scrantom, Rochester, Dec. 2, 1813, R. H. S.,
Pub., VII, 178.

108 Charles Carroll, Journal, Rochester Letters.

109 Elisha Ely to Col. Rochester, Pittsfield, June 24, 1814, Rochester Letters,

LOWER GENESEE SETTLEMENTS 47

The Ely mills, together with those of Francis Brown at the main falls
and Stone s sawmill across the river, promised an adequate supply of
lumber and flour until the return of peace, for the danger of invasion
had checked improvements at the falls. Colonel Rochester reported
"not more than three or four houses building" on the lots previously
contracted for, and only one additional lot sold during the year. 110 The
scarcity of provisions became less acute as the army contractors ran
short of funds, prompting merchants to question their credit. 111 More
than one impatient settler declared, "If we do not have a peace im
mediately we shall have a long, bloody and ruinous war. If the Enemy
has the compleat [sic] command of Lake Ontario the inhabitants of
this part of our Country will be placed in a very desperate situation." 112

Indeed, 1814 brought the threat of invasion directly to the lower
Genesee, but through courage and good fortune possible disaster was
avoided. Captain Isaac W. Stone successfully recruited a company of
fifty men, and two cannon were hauled from the arsenal near Canandai-
gua to defend the Genesee settlements. One of these, an eighteen-
pounder, was taken to the mouth of the river, while the other, a four-
pounder, was mounted at Deep Hollow bridge, surrounded by breast
works, and pretentiously designated Fort Bender. A local Committee
of Safety organized a patrol on the lake shore to warn of the enemy s
approach. 113

These preparations had scarcely been completed when Commodore
Yeo s squadron, greatly strengthened during the winter, arrived off
Charlotte on the evening of May i4th. With the American fleet still
undergoing repairs at Sacketts Harbor, the community was left practi
cally to its own defense. The pioneer tavern keeper had by this time ac
quired the title of colonel, while the youthful millers, Francis Brown
and Elisha Ely, served as captains. Thirty-odd men and boys were
mustered from the village and equipped with powder from the Ely
brothers store. Additional militia gathered from the neighborhood, and
Colonel Stone, mounted on a white horse, endeavored to station his
forces about the mouth of the river in such fashion as to disguise their
weakness. Yeo s demands for the surrender of all military supplies were
three times rejected on the first day, but an attempt to entice one of the
gunboats up the river was frustrated by the premature discharge of the
cannon, which precipitated a brief bombardment and the safe with-

I10 0sgood, "Rochester: It s Founders," R. H. S., Pub., I, 67-68.

1U Hamlet Scrantom to Abraham Scrantom, Brighton, Jan. 24, 1815, R, H. S.,
Pub., VII, 189.

113 Moses Atwater to Samuel J. Andrews, Canandaigua, July 8, 1814* Atwater-
Andrews Letters.

113 Ontario Repository, Mar. 29, 1814. Hamlet Scrantom, Oliver Culver, Frederick
Hanford, and Samuel Latta were named to this committee by a public meeting at
Isaac W. Stone s tavern on Mar. 14.

48 THE WATER-POWER CITY

drawal of the gunboat. The stout hearts and bold front shown by the
local militia possibly delayed action, affording time for the arrival of
reinforcements from the interior on the second day, when General
Porter hastened over to take charge. Commodore Yeo, unwilling to risk
ambush for so small a prize, finally "hoisted sail and stood down the
lake" on the third morning. 114

The militiamen returned to their homes, full of pride over their
achievement, but in succeeding months these same courageous settlers,
scattered in their lonely cabins, began to exaggerate the extent of their
danger/ 15 Even the arrival of Chauncey s re-enforced fleet in September,
with a force of 3000 on their way to strengthen the Niagara defenses 116
(where the fort was still held by the British), failed to dispell the gloom
accentuated by the death of Colonel Stone when returning from military
duty in the West a few weeks before. 117 The villagers became resigned
to seeing the "lake shore . . . scourged in the spring." 11S

Rumors of peace had too obvious a relation to the deep-felt desires
and speculative interests of every settler to receive credence as the
villagers prepared themselves for winter quarters on the Genesee that
year. Unusually heavy snows blocked the roads, delaying the irregular
mails from Canandaigua. Thus it was the middle of February, iSij, 119
before the news arrived that a treaty of peace had been signed the
previous December. The end of the war promised a new day for the
village at the falls, and Silas 0. Smith rushed from the small group
gathered about the postrider to get his pistol and start the general
celebration by firing from the steps of his store a rapid fusillade which
soon brought out the last stragglers to hear the good news. 120

^Ontario Repository, May 17, 1814; Hanford, "Visits of American and British
Naval Vessels," R. H. S., Pub., Ill, 55-64,

115 No doubt the eighty thousand residents of Upper Canada were as much
perturbed as were the sixty thousand in western New York.

116 Hanford, p. 64.

117 Reynolds, "Autobiography," Rochester Post-Express, Sept. 23, 1884.

118 Hamlet Scrantom to Abraham Scrantom, Rochester, Jan. 24, 1815, R. H. S.,
Pub., VII, 189.

119 Ontario Repository, Feb. 21, 1815. The news of peace reached Avon by ex
press mail on Feb. 17. British and American flags were soon hoisted over all
public buildings along the state road,

m Scrantom, "Old Citizens Letters," Scrapbook, Roch. Hist. Soc,, p. 16,

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CHAPTER III

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF ROCHESTERVILLE

1815-1818

THE NEWS of peace brought a surge of activity about the lower
Genesee, Not only did the prospects of Colonel Rochester s settle
ment instantly revive, but enterprise reappeared at Charlotte and
Fall Town, while new settlements sprang up on the east bank of the
river. An intense rivalry developed as many of the more vigorous
personalities of western New York directed their energies toward the
promotion of towns and mill-sites on the lower Genesee. 1 Settlers
trooped in, not as farmers, but as artisans and mechanics, eager to
locate in a thriving village. The essential functions of community life
were quickly provided at several of the lower Genesee settlements.

But the upper falls, by interrupting the downward flow of Genesee
produce and supplying power for the milling of marketable products,
gave a decided advantage to Rochester. The roads, converging at the
bridge, brought increased activity, enabling the settlement to look
forward hopefully toward early incorporation. The attempts of jealous
rivals to deflect commerce and retard the growth of the village were
frustrated when the projected state canal was routed across the Genesee
at this point. Before the end of the decade, Rochester had become a
sizable village, ranking as one of the chief towns west of Albany, though
it did not as yet suspect the boom growth that was to characterize the
next period.

PEACEFUL GROWTH ON THE LOWER GENESEE

The shouting and gunplay over the news of peace quickly dispelled
the last traces of gloom at the Four Corners. The Ely brothers painted
their newly completed gristmill a dull red, and as soon as the spring

1 Micah Brooks to Col. Rochester, Albany, Nov. n, 1815, Rochester Letters,
Roch. Hist. Soc. While attending the public sale of lands for taxes in various parts
of the state, Brooks writes: "I find the Speculators run hard upon Ontario con
sidering it to be valuable Land there will be none Sold in that Township West
of Genesee River at the village of Rochester but a great number of Lots will be
sold in the Township on the East side of the River,"

SO THE WATER-POWER CITY

thaw cleared the raceway their four pairs of millstones began to turn
out an improved grade of flour. 2 Running late into the night, the Red
Mill, as soon distinguished, afforded a convenient gathering place for
those who sought relaxation after sundown around a flagon of whiskey
from the newly established distillery nearby. 8 The rumble of the mill
stones, mingling with the clangor of Carter s anvil across the street and
with the sound of the hammers of Abelard Reynolds workmen, busy
enlarging his house into the first tavern on the west bank, 4 provided a
cheerful welcome to Erastus Cook, the first silversmith/ to Horace and
George Sill, the first booksellers, 6 and to a half-dozen other merchants
laden with fresh supplies from Albany or Montreal. 7

The development of community life was marked by the appearance
of several pioneer institutions. Tuneful melodies occasionally drifted
down from the second story of Barnard s tailor shop where choristers
frequently gathered, 8 replacing the religious and educational activities
which had already moved from that accommodating loft to more suitable
quarters. The first religious society was organized in August when six
teen charter members formed the pioneer Presbyterian church in the
schoolhouse. 9 Two months later an even more significant ceremony
united Jehiel Barnard and Delia Scrantom in the first wedlock joined
in the settlement. 10 Death was reaping its toll, but the stork more than
repaired such losses. 11 The community was taking root; thirty-two
additional lots were disposed of by the proprietors, 12 while a census of
the inhabitants in December, 1815, showed a total of 33i. 18 Thus en-

2 Ontario Repository, Feb. 7, 1815; Maude Motley, "Romance of Milling,"
R. H. S., Pub., X, 174-176.

s Motley, pp. 174-176; Hamlet Scrantom to Abraham Scrantom, Jan. 24, 1815,
R. H. S., Pub., VII, 190.

4 Abelard Reynolds, "Autobiography," Rochester Post-Express, Sept. 23, 1884.

* Edwin Scrantom, "Old Citizen s Letters," Scrapbook, p. 5, Roch. Hist, Soc.

6 Scrantom, "Old Citizen s Letters"; Ontario Repository, Feb. 27, i8 x6, an
nounces a supply of Mrs. Hafland s new novel, The Sisters, as available at the
bookstore.

7 Ontario Repository, Apr. 5, Aug. i, Oct. 24, 1815. Umbrellas appear for the
first time in these announcements.

8 John D, Lynn, "Life and Times of John Mastick," R. H. S., Pub., VII, *aa.

9 Charles M. Robinson, First Church Chronicles: iSi^iois (Rochester, 1915),
pp. 11-24; Orlo J. Price, "One Hundred Years of Protestantism in Rochester,"
R. H. S., Pub., XII, 246-247.

10 Edwin Scrantom, "The First Wedding in Rochester," R. H. S,, Pub., VI, 313-
3 iS.

11 Edward R. Foreman, "The First White Child Born in Rochester," R. H. S.,
Pub,, VI, 317-327* In addition to the three children born to Mrs, Josiah Fish in
Allan s old mill, five other children were born in the families at the bridge by
1814.

^Howard L. Osgood, "Rochester: Its Founders and Founding," R. H, S., Pub.,
1,67.

A Directory for the Village of Rochester (Rochester, 1827), p. 91.

ESTABLISHMENT OF ROCHESTERVILLE 51

couraged, the settlement gathered for its first Christmas Ball in the
assembly room of Henry Skinner s new house at the Four Corners on
Monday, the 25th, at three o clock. 14

<

From the start Rochester included within its orbit the activities at
the eastern end of the bridge and those of Frankfort, a half mile farther
north on the west bank at the main falls. The scattered settlers had fre
quently rallied as one community during the war years, and although
peace brought an increased incentive to independent development, their
unity was never seriously threatened. Thus, Hamlet Scrantom, after
residing alternately at both ends of the bridge, moved down to the main
falls in 1815 to take charge of Brown s rebuilt gristmill. 15

Francis Brown provided a vigorous leadership to the Frankfort settle
ment. The Scrantom family lodged in Brown s large house overlooking
the public square which had been laid out in the New York tradition
as the center of the development. Here the proprietor and his workmen
boarded together until, in 1816, the young bachelor married a daughter
of Daniel Penfield, leader of the settlement a few miles east. 16 The road
from the bridge was improved, and, with both a sawmill and a gristmill
running overtime, new settlers were attracted and a general store
opened. 17 Soon, a separate schoolhouse being required, Gates District
No. 10 was formed. 18 Dr. Matthew Brown, Jr., arrived from Rome at
this time and with his younger brother organized the Genesee Manu
facturing Company to develop the water power of the main falls. 19 The
company undertook the job of opening Brown s race, which had to be
dug much of the way through the limestone ledge that formed the brink
of the gorge. The first section, seventy-four rods in length, was com
pleted late in 18 1 6 at a cost of $3,872.96, providing the "hydraulic
power" which ultimately attracted a group of enterprising millers to the
west bank at the main falls. 20 Even before the race opened, a cotton
factory was erected and equipped with spindles from Massachusetts;

14 Invitation sent to Mrs. Abelard Reynolds, Dec. 16, 1815, Harris MSS, Roch.
Hist. Soc.

15 Hamlet Scrantom to Abraham Scrantom, June 3, 1815, R. H. S., Pub., VII,
190-192. Scrantom reports that with the aid of two helpers he was able to grind
50 to 150 bushels a day. His earnings now amounted to $450 or $500 a year for
himself and his son, Elbert.

16 Motley, "Romance of Milling," p. 172; Turpin C. Bannister, "Early Town
Planning in New York State," New York History, XXIV (April, -1943) , 186-195.

17 Ontario Repository, Oct. 18, 1814. A store opened in Frankfort during the
war advertised a quantity of liquors, teas, American factory ginghams, grind
stones, and a few books including several copies of the Edinburgh Encyclopedia.

18 Blake McKelvey, "On the Educational Frontier," R. H. S., Pub., XVII, 10.
u Ontario Repository, May 28, Dec. 10, 1816 ; see Dr. Brown s obituary, Demo
crat, Dec. 30, 31, 1851.

of the State of New York in Relation to the Erie and Champlain

52 THE WATER-POWER CITY

the timely arrival of several trained operatives made it possible to start
work the next spring. 21

East of the river speculative ventures gave place to practical develop
ments with the return of peace. Samuel J. Andrews, brother-in-law of
Atwater of Canandaigua, arrived to take charge of their joint enterprise
on the Genesee in 1815, erecting the first stone building in the settlement
at the top of the hill overlooking the bridge (corner of St. Paul and
Main streets). There the pioneer store on the east barik opened in
1816. Andrews likewise found time to supervise the construction of
mills at the main falls and to lay the foundations for a fine home over
looking the river halfway to the bridge. 22 The work of clearing the land,
improving the roads, and erecting these and other buildings attracted
additional settlers. Soon the community at the east end of the bridge,
included within the town of Brighton as set off from Boyle in 1814,
organized Brighton District No. 4, and erected a small schoolhouse
where Clinton and Mortimer streets cross today. 28

-<

The dominance of the Rochester settlement over these close neighbors
and the surrounding territory was favored in a limited respect by its
post office, the records of which likewise provide a rough measure of the
community s growth. Before Reynolds appointment as postmaster late
in 1812, residents of the lower Genesee had frequently gone to Canan-
daigua, Bloomfield, or Avon for their letters. 24 Though a post office

Canals (Albany, 1825), I, 3i5-3 i6. Matthew Brown, Jr. and Francis Brown in a
report to Myron Holley give the following figures:

Men s labour 1535 days at 62 J^ cts. $959 37

Team s labour 312 do. 50 cts. 156 oo

Do. by contract, 100 oo

Mason s work by contract, laying dry wall, 55 oo

Blacksmith s bills, repairing tools, &c. 142 43

13 kegs of powder, at $14 182 oo

Tools worn out and destroyed, say 25 oo

Use of carts and waggons, 40 oo
Subsistence for men at i6s. per week, the

common price for boarding, 435 oo

Subsistence for teams at i6s. per week, 90 oo
Add for work done by contract, on a part of

the canal, the nature of the work the same, i>3oo oo

Superintending six months, say 383 39

Amount of the whole expenditure, $3,868 19

21 John Kelsey, Lives and Reminiscences of the Pioneers oj Rochester and
Western New York, pp, 41-43.

23 R. H. S., Pub., Ill, 226-228; X, 185; XI, 284.

28 Blake McKelvey, "Educational Frontier," p. 10.

u Ontario Repository, July n, Oct. 10, 1809, July 3, 1810. A dozen or so let
ters for residents in Boyle are advertised by the postmasters of the above villages
on these dates.

ESTABLISHMENT OF ROCHESTERVILLE 53

opened in Boyle [Pittsford] in iSn 25 served the settlers at the falls
for a time, the office on the site of the Reynolds Arcade soon became
the chief postal depot for this area. Mail collections for the last quarter
of 1813 amounted to only $10.37, a nd a year later to only $19.40, but
the same period in 1816 brought in $171.93, nearly an eightfold growth
in two years. 26 One third of the receipts 2T went to the rider who carried
the mail by horseback from Canandaigua to Rochester irregularly before
1815, when semi-weekly deliveries and soon a stage wagon were in
troduced. 28

Rochester s central position was moderately strengthened by road
construction during these years. A Rochester Turnpike Company was
organized to improve the highway from Canandaigua, while repairs on
the road west to Lewiston were likewise undertaken. 29 The East River
Road, opened northward from the bridge over Honeoye Creek to the
bridge at Rochester, connected the latter village with the older settle
ments to the south. Despite a grant of authority to open a road from
Rochester to Batavia and the application for a state road to the head
of the Allegany River, 30 for several years Rochester s only route to the
southwest was by way of Scottsville and the old state road. The condi
tion of these forest highways, obstructed by innumerable stumps and
miry bogs, was accepted as a matter of course by the villagers who
used them to tap the commercial resources of the hinterland. The scat
tered farmers eagerly made the best of the facilities available. 31

Meanwhile, the more important local trade artery of the day the
Genesee River was depositing an enlarged volume of produce on
Rochester s doorstep. Logging and rafting down the river had increased

25 Ontario Repository, Oct. 22, 1811 ; Charles H. True, "Pittsford Town Records,"
R. H. S., Pub., VIII, 125.

20 AbeIard Reynolds, Post Office Receipts, MSS, Roch. Hist. Soc.

27 E. R. Foreman, "Post Offices and Postmasters of Rochester," R. H. S., Pub.,
XII, 56, 57. Until 1816 the rates on domestic letters were: "For each piece of paper
of which a single letter or letter packet may be composed, under forty miles, 8
cents; under 90 miles 10 cents; under 150 miles, 12 YT. cents; under 300 miles, 17
cents; under 500 miles, 20 cents; over 500 miles, 25 cents." For thirty years after
1816 the rates were: "For each letter weighing less than half an ounce, if carried
less than 300 miles, 5 cents; over 300 miles, 10 cents; each additional half ounce,
double rates; drop letters delivered from the office where posted, 2 cents."

28 William F. Peck, Semi-Centennial History of Rochester, pp. 92-93; Carrier
Receipts, 1814, 1815, MSS, Reynolds Coll.

29 N. Y. Laws of 1814, ch. 199; Laws of 1815, ch. 31; Ontario Repository,
May 2, Aug. i, 1815; Daniel Cruger to Col. Rochester, Marcellus, N. Y., Apr. 3,
1815, Rochester Letters, tells of a second turnpike company incorporated to open
a road from Skaneateles to Palmyra, whence a road already extended to Rochester.

30 Ontario Repository , May 2, 1815; Mar. 25, 1817.

81 E. P. Clapp, "Trade and Transportation in Western New York," MS, Roch.
Hist. Soc., pp. 143-144, tells of a Chili farmer who recalled the early sixteen-mile
trips to market made with a yoke of oxen and 32 to 35 bushels of wheat, return
ing in 20 weary hours.

54 THE WATER-POWER CITY

steadily during the war years, while the renewal of Canadian trade
emphasized by the sudden jump in the price of wheat to $2.50 a bushel
in 1815 and of flour to $15 a barrel further stimulated the growth of
river commerce. 82 By 1816 Rochester was recognized as the principal
grain market of western New York, where, despite the "cold summer"
of 1816 and the tedious labor of plowing, harvesting and threshing,
wheat was becoming a major crop. 83 Frequent advertisements by lower
Genesee merchants for ashes and staves likewise encouraged the flow of
these forest products down the river. 34

So profitable had this water traffic become that partially enclosed
scows now made their appearance among the open rafts. Provided with
a low cabin at both ends and with cleated running boards along the sides
for the "shovers" to walk with their poles, these Durham boats, pat
terned after those on the Mohawk, 85 made frequent round trips during
the Genesee high-water seasons of spring and fall. By 1820 the number
of such boats, staffed by regular crews of from four to seven boatmen,
numbered eight or ten. 86 Except during the dry season, these well-built
craft were able to make their way down from Mount Morris, occa
sionally even from Dansville, over the rapids above Rochester to unload
just south of the upper falls. No settlement on the New York frontier,
except Buffalo, had a better trade feeder, 87 while Buffalo lacked an easy
means for transhipment to Eastern or Canadian markets.

Rochester s major trade asset of the day was not the river but the
vast lake a few miles north. The Canadian market was not only greatly
expanded, but its merchants, enjoying empire preference abroad, were
not as yet ready to enforce mercantile restrictions against American
producers inland. Canada s interior merchants, faced with the sudden
decline in their share of the fur trade, were eager to participate in the
growing lumber and produce trade. 88 Soon a fleet of sixty sailing craft,
probably none of them much over a hundred tons capacity, were busily
engaged in the commerce of Lake Ontario. 8 * In 1818 an average of
fifteen vessels a day passed down the St. Lawrence during a six weeks
period. 40 The Genesee port, outlet for the growing produce of a rich

82 Clapp, "Trade and Transportation," p, 13.

88 Clapp, "Trade and Transportation," pp. 135, 142 ; Sophia Webster Lloyd,
"Recollections of Pioneer Life in Western New York," MS, Roch. Hist. Soc.

84 Ontario Repository, Apr. $, May i, Oct. 24, Nov. 28, 1815.

85 Clapp, "Trade and Transportation," pp. 38-48.

86 Clapp, "Trade and Transportation," pp. 150-152.

87 N. Y. State Conservation Comm., Report on the Watershed of the Genesee
(Albany, 1912), pp. 14-18.

^Creighton, Commercial Empire of the St. Lawrence: 1760-1850, pp. 172-174.

89 Clapp, "Trade and Transportation," p. 135; Capt. James Van Cleve, "Remi
niscences of Early Sailing on Lake Ontario," MS, Buffalo Hist. Soc.

40 Van Cleve, "Reminiscences," p. 65; Laws in Relation to the Erie and Cham-
plain Canals, I, 473.

ESTABLISHMENT OF ROCHESTERVILLE 55

valley, made an increasing contribution to this commerce, in which
boats of local construction played a part. 41 Even from the southeast,
merchants were bringing the produce of the older towns of the Finger
Lakes to the Genesee and other lake ports rather than pay the heavy
freight rates for the long haul to Albany. 42 Genesee shipments were, as
a result, bounding upward in the first years of peace, 43 to the great
benefit of each of the lower Genesee settlements.

-<

The thriving commerce brought new life to both Charlotte and Fall
Town, where several of the merchants who had withdrawn during the
war now returned. The old Hanford store at the landing was reopened
by two of the younger brothers, 44 while Frederick Hanford associated
himself with Oliver Culver in trading activities between Brighton and
Fall Town, soon engaging a fleet of five boats in the enterprise. 45 Gideon
King s younger sons, Bradford and Moses, who had been taken back to
Suffield by their widowed mother two decades before, now returned as
young men to build homes on the Ridge and promote the sale of their
remaining lands. 46 The prospect of a settlement on the opposite bank
prompted Frederick Hanford to seek control of the ferry on the lower
Genesee in 1818, but meanwhile he was not neglecting to make judicious
investments at the upper falls. 47

As the fortunes of Charlotte at the river s mouth had been more
seriously injured by the war, few of its earlier merchants returned.
George Clinton Latta was a notable exception first as the local repre
sentative of the firm of Bushnell and Latta, and later on his own
account directing many of the trading operations of the lower Gene-
see. 48 Samuel Currier, former tavern keeper at Charlotte, served for a

41 Hosea Rogers, quoted in R. H. S., Pub., IX, 101-103; Annah B. Yates, "Early
Rochester Family Records," No. XLVII, Post-Express, May 27, 1911; Van Cleve,
"Reminiscences," .pp. 150-151, Van Cleve gives the names of five sailing vessels
built on the Genesee in 1818.

42 Ontario Repository, July 14, 1818; Hibernicus [DeWitt Clinton], Letters on
the Natural History and Internal Resources of the State of New York (New
York, 1822), p. 160.

^Ontario Repository, Jan. 7, 1817; Aug. n, 1818. Nearly 5,000 barrels of
flour were shipped from the Genesee in the last two and a half months of the
1816 season, while 21,000 barrels were shipped during the first half of the 1818
season. *

^Ontario Repository, Sept. 12, 1815.

45 Oliver Culver Papers, MSS, Nos. 4, 8, University of Rochester; see the
sketch of Culver s career, Union, Aug. 16, 1852.

46 Telegraph, Nov. 28, 1818; Sept. 4, 1821.

47 Ontario Repository, May 28, 1816; Mar. 17, 1818; Genesee County Deeds,
Liber II, 418, 434-440.

^George Clinton Latta Papers, MSS, Univ. Rochester; R. H. S., Pub., XI,
248-250; "Reminiscences of George C. Latta," in Annah B. Yates, "Early Roches
ter Family Records," Nos. XLVI-XLVII, Post Express, May 20, 27, 1911,

56 THE WATER-POWER CITY

time as a boat captain, though his discouraging record of burying six
wives in almost as many years not only drove him to apparent suicide,
but revealed the numerous hazards that still surrounded the lower
Genesee settlers. 49 Frequent lake storms occasionally caught one or more
of the small schooners far from port with disastrous results for their
crews, 50 yet the trade of the lake and of the lower Genesee enjoyed
steady growth. 51

Even more marked was the increasing strength and number of the
lower Genesee settlements. Old Northampton and Northfield, long since
renamed Gates and Boyle respectively, had by 1817 been broken into
nine townships. West of the river, Gates was already backed by Riga,
Ogden, Parma, and Murray; while on the east side, in place of Boyle
stood Brighton, Pittsford, Perinton, and Penfield; still the process of
township reorganization was scarcely half completed. 52 The story was
one of rapid growth. The area of these townships, later organized as
Monroe County, which in 1810 had contained but 4,683 persons, num
bered 11,178 by 1814, and more than doubled during the next five years,
reaching 27,288 by 1820. Gates on the west bank of the Genesee num
bered 2,643 * n 1820, while Brighton had 1,972, not counting a settle
ment of Indian families still encamped along the ridge between the bay
and the river. 58 Together these two townships had enjoyed a threefold
growth since the close of the war. 54

THE INCORPORATION OF ROCHESTERVILLE

The chief advantage from the lower Genesee s commercial and popu
lation growth was to be derived not at the rival shipping docks, nor at
the crossroads settlements scattered round about, 65 but at the upper
falls. There much of the grain was turned into flour, the logs into
building materials, while other products of the valley were prepared for

49 Dorothy S* Truesdale, "The Marriages and Bereavements of Captain Samuel
Currier," R. H. S., Pub., XVII, 201-203.

60 Repository, Nov. 7, 14, 1815, The JuUa was wrecked off Pulteneyville on
Oct. 24, and all lives lost. The newly developed "safe and convenient harbor at
Pultney Ville" had proved beyond her reach when the storm broke. Repository,
Apr. 4, 1815; Tekgraph, Oct. 3, 1820.

51 Repository, Jan. 7, 1817; Leonard Stoneburner, Shipping Accounts, Autograph
Letters, Roch, Hist. Soc. ; Chilton Williamson, "New York s Impact on the Cana
dian Economy," New York History, XXIV (1943), 43, passim.

62 R. H. S., Pub., VII, 303-320; VIII, 126-127.

58 Harris MSS, No. 6$A, Roch. Hist. Soc.

54 N. Y. Census (1855), pp. xxiii-xxiv.

155 It is worth noting that as late as -1820 the large townships of Penfield and
Riga each exceeded the population of Gates, and that the millers on Irondequoit
Creek in the first named town were still confident rivals of Rochester. N. Y. Cen
sus (1855), p. xxiii; Grace Raymond, "Penfield Pioneers," MS; Lucy F. Gay
"Pioneer Life in Riga," MS, Roch, Hist. Soc.

ESTABLISHMENT OF ROCHESTERVILLE 57

distant markets. Farmers and merchants, coining in from the surround
ing territory to unload, made the village an ideal market town, and
many merchants from the older Genesee settlements quickly transferred
all or part of their activities to this more favored location. Soon village
incorporation was achieved, and the fundamental community functions
were provided. The eleventh-hour challenge of a new rival at the lower
falls was lightly tossed aside when the Erie Canal was routed across
the Genesee at the upper falls.

The actual details of its incorporation were possibly the easiest and
simplest of the many steps necessary to the establishment of the village.
The application for a village charter, made to the legislature early in
1817, was formulated by a local committee and carried to Albany by
Colonel Rochester himself. 56 On March 2ist the act passed, incorpo
rating the village of Rochesterville in the County of Genesee. 57 A gener
ous tract of 655 acres on the west bank of the Genesee, including Colonel
Rochester s hundred acres, the two hundred acres of Frankfort, and
room for expansion north, south, and west, was set off within Gates
township for the new village. Though the existence of an earlier Roches
ter post village in Ulster County may have prompted the adoption of
the name Rochesterville, the settlement, which had for some time used
the shorter name, continued to do so in non-legal affairs. Among the
approximately seven hundred residents, possibly a hundred adult males
(who had lived in the county during the preceding six months as free
holders to the value of twenty pounds, or as renters to the value of
forty shillings, and who had been rated and paid taxes to the state)
assembled at the schoolhouse on the first Monday of May, 1817, to
choose the seventeen village officers specified in the charter. 58

Unfortunately, Rochester s incorporation was marred by an unhappy
but spirited village quarrel. The general rejoicing which greeted the
news of incorporation stopped suddenly when the merchants prepared
a slate of candidates excluding all mechanics. Some of the latter angrily
rallied their fellows behind a ticket dominated by their own candidates,
and in the election which followed the mechanics as workmen were
then known carried the day. 59 It was the merchants 7 turn to feel in-

^Roswell Babbit in behalf of the Village Incorporation Committee to Col.
Rochester, Rochester, Jan, 23, 1817; Enos Pomeroy to Col. Rochester, Rochester,
Mar. 20, 1817, Rochester Letters.

B7 N. Y. Laws of 1817, ch. 96.

m W. Earl Weller, "The Development of the Charter of the City of Rochester:
1817-1938," M. A. thesis, Univ. Roch. (1938), pp. 13-17; Records of the Doings
and Votes of the Inhabitants of the Village of Rochester, May 5, i8 i7.

59 Records of the Doings ... of the Inhabitants ... of Rochester, May 5,
1817. The trustees elected were Daniel Mack, William Cobb, Everard Peck, Jehiel
Barnard, and Francis Brown, and at least Brown could hardly be classed as a
"mechanic."

58 THE WATER-POWER CITY

dignant, and rumor said that they were discharging the mechanics
responsible for the opposition. News of the untoward development,
soon reaching Colonel Rochester on his Bloomfield estate, prompted a
letter full of sound advice to Dr. Matthew Brown:

I would rather have sacrificed $500 than that such an event should have
happened. ... I have constantly endeavored to impress it on the inhabitants
to harmonize among themselves as well as with the inhabitants of the neigh
boring village of Carthage in order to make it all one place. ... It will be
pleasing to the enemies of Rochester, and you know she has a great number
who envy her growing consequence. I must entreat that you and Esquire
Mastick will endeavor to heal the wound before it becomes an ulcer. 60

Apparently the threat of strife was averted and harmony restored,
for the progress of the settlement continued. The close accord which
had drawn the two settlements west of the river into one village was
matched by a like cooperation with the developments at the east end
of the bridge. There Enos Stone at last agreed to sell the central portion
of his farm minus a dozen choice lots already disposed of to Elisha
Johnson of Canandaigua. 61

Johnson, who with his partner, Orson Seymour, paid $10,000 for the
eighty-acre purchase, moved his family to the falls in May, iSiy. 62
Soon the tract was surveyed into village lots with a gridiron street plan
and a Main Street leading down to the bridge where it joined with
Buffalo Street on the other side. Though a petition for the inclusion of
the eastern settlement within the Rochesterville limits produced no
action from the legislature, possibly because of its location in a separate
county, 63 pther measures of cooperation were steadily advanced. Thus
Elisha Johnson s plan, calling for a wing dam to assure a steady supply
of water for his east side raceway, was soon revised by agreement with
the Rochester proprietors to extend the dam across the river so as to
serve both the east and west races at the upper falls. * Work on the joint
projects ultimately cost Johnson and Seymour $12,000 and laid the
foundation for later disputes, but meanwhile the settlers on both sides

60 Col. Rochester to Dr. Brown, May 9, 1817; Brown to Rochester, May 15,
1817, MSS, Ontario Hist. Soc., Canandaigua, N. Y.

61 Ontario County Deeds, Liber 28, p, 98; Ontario Repository, Feb. 10, 1818,
Johnson and Seymour advertise 220 village lots and 40 water rights for sale;
"Elisha Johnson" in Post Express, Apr. 14, 1893; Aug. 25, 1894. See Osgood Col
lection, MSS, III, 50.

^Elisha Johnson to Col. Rochester, Rochester, May 16, 1817, Rochester Let
ters.

68 Ontario Repository, Jan. 20, 1818. The petition, dated Dec. 9, 1817, was
signed by Samuel Andrews and William Atkinson representing East Rochester,
and John Mastick and Libbeus Elliott for Rochesterville.

04 Elisha Johnson to Col, Rochester, Rochester, May 16, 1817; Rochester Let
ters.

ESTABLISHMENT OF ROCHESTERVILLE 59

gathered for a picnic on July 4, 1817, blasting rock from the Johnson
race as a practical celebration of the day. 6 ; 5

<

There were many reasons for rejoicing at the upper falls that year.
Within the past eighteen months more than a score of stores and other
shops had located in the village, while new ventures had been launched
by several of the earlier arrivals. A tannery, a brickyard, and the
Weekly Gazette, Rochester s first paper, all made their appearance in
i8i6. 66 A new gristmill was constructed east of the river on Johnson s
race by young William Atkinson in 1817, while Colonel Rochester s
second son, John, took charge of a sawmill on the west bank. 67 Already
a second bookstore, opened by young Everard Peck from Connecticut,
was displaying a sideline of wall paper. 68 An enterprising drygoods
merchant must have been filling numerous orders for the white paint
that provided the sparkling appearance noted by travelers. 6 *

A group of variously trained professional men were attracted to the
village by the prospect of growing up with the community. Thus a
young medic from the East described Rochester as "a delightful village
. . . surrounded by woods, [containing] many elegant buildings . . .
and rapidly increasing but no place for me. There are eight physicians
in the village, six more than it can support." 70 Somebody should have
advised Dr. Collar that several of his professional brethren were pre
occupied with town-lot speculation and other village affairs. Neither
Dr. Matthew Brown nor Dr. Levi Ward found much time for the care
of the sick, while Dr. Frederick F. Backus was busy with the establish
ment of the first drug store. There was still ample room for enterprising
professionals in Rochester, as young Moses Chapin, a law student from
the East, demonstrated when he put up his shingle in spite of the six
lawyers already located in the village. 71

^Scrantom, "Old Citizen s Letters," Scrapbook, Roch. Hist. Soc., p. 30.

66 Ontario Repository, Jan. 2, May 12, Apr. 23, June 18, Dec. 3, 1816.

67 R. H. S., Pub., X, 180; John C. Rochester to Col. Rochester, Nov. 7, 1817,
Rochester Letters.

68 Ontario Repository, Apr. i, 1817.

69 Frances Wright, Views of Society and Manners in America, p. 165; Ashley
Samson in Rochester Daily Union, Mar. 29, 1855, reminisces of his first visit to
Rochester in 1817: "I came upon quite a cluster of neat-looking buildings, mostly
painted white . . . surrounded on all sides by dense forests, many of the dwelling
houses being without cellars or underpinnings, resting upon blocks of wood."

70 William B. Collar to his parents, Wyoming, N. Y., June 7, 1817, typed copy,
Roch. Hist. Soc.

71 Oswald P. Backus, Jr., "History of the Monroe County Court," R. H. S.,
Pub., IV, 198; "Frederick F. Backus," in F. B. Dexter, Biographical Sketches of the
Graduates of Yak College (New Haven, 1912), VI, 520-521, and "Moses Chapin,"
VI, 376-378; Rev. A. G. Hall, A Discourse Delivered at the Funeral of Moses
Chapin (Rochester, 1865); [Henry M. Ward], "Dr. Levi Ward, Jr.," Memorials
of a Grandparent and Parents (n.d.). Though generally refer*e4 to a? Pr.

60 THE WATER-POWER CITY

So bright were the prospects of Rochesterville that the aged proprietor
was becoming impatient to make the long-deferred removal to the falls. 72
The contrasting trends in land values must have impressed Colonel
Rochester, for the Bloomfield estate he had bought in 1814 for $12,000
was assuming the character of a frozen asset, while the No. i lot in the
village, sold to Henry Skinner in 1811 for $200, already exceeded
$12,000 in value when purchased by Azel and Russell Ensworth in Jan
uary, 1817. The Ensworths soon erected a fine new tavern on their
choice lot at the Four Corners, providing accommodations for the
numerous travelers now brought to the village three times a week by
the Canandaigua-Lewiston stage. Not only the regular stage wagons, 78
but also a variety of one-horse dearborns, Dutch or light Jersey wagons,
slow but sturdy ox carts, and great covered wagons were transporting
travelers and settlers westward in an ever increasing stream. One esti
mate placed the number of families that crossed Rochester bridge in the
summer of 1816 at one thousand. 74

Since the necessity for keeping in close touch with these develop
ments brought the proprietors on frequent visits to the falls, the desire
for a free hand in their projects prompted a division of the joint hold
ings in the summer of 1816, Rochester, Fitzhugh, and Carroll each
received fifty-odd lots from the unsold portion of the tract, together
with an equal share of water privileges, while each agreed to contribute
to the expense of building and repairing the raceway and dam in pro
portion to the number of mills to be erected on his lots. 75

A congenial but diversified community life was taking shape. The
modest frame structure, erected early in 1817 by the Presbyterians,
supplied the first meeting house, facilitating the work of the pioneer
resident pastor, the Reverend Comfort Williams, who had arrived the
year before. 76 Episcopal, Quaker, Baptist, Methodist, and Catholic resi
dents held services from time to time, though only the first three groups
established regular societies before the end of 1818, by which date a
Sabbath school and missionary society had also appeared. 77 The first

Ward, Jr., during the twenties, the Jr. is not used in this account, and the same
holds for Dr. Matthew Brown.

" Ontario Repository, Jan. 30, Feb. 27, 1816; Rochester Letters for i8 i6 and
1817.

78 John M. Duncan, Traveler through Part of the United States and Canada in
1818-1819 (Glasgow, 1823), II, 5-6, gives a description of a stage wagon on the
Genesee Road. Dr. Azel Ensworth obituary, Democrat, May 8, 1854.

74 Lieut. Francis Hall, Travels in Canada and the United States in 1816 and
1817 (London, 1818), pp. 194-195.

75 Agreement dated, July 6, 1816, and deed of partition, Aug. 13, 1817, Roches
ter Letters.

70 Robinson, First Church Chronicles, pp. 23-25; Dexter, Graduates of Yak,

VI, 233-234; Charles M. Williams, The Rev. Comfort Williams [Rochester, 1910].

7T Annah B. Yates, "First Church Chronicles," R. H. S., Pub., I, 211; Orlo J.

ESTABLISHMENT OF ROCHESTERVILLE 61

local Masonic lodge organized in the summer of i8i7, 78 about the same
time that the first village band formed. 79 Evening parties lasting from
six to eleven and afternoon teas (in one instance forty ladies gathered
to welcome an out-of-town sister) supplied social pleasures, particularly
agreeable during the winter season when good sleighing added to the
merriment. 80 Occasional weddings afforded more festive ceremonies, as
when young Gerrit Smith, just out of Hamilton College, came to
Rochester to marry Wealthea Ann Backus, daughter of Hamilton s
president, who was stopping at the time with her brother, the leading
physician and sole druggist of the village. 81

~*

The first visit of the Ontario, pioneer American steamboat on the
Great Lakes, 82 early in April, 1817, brought a fresh surge of enthusiasm
to the lower Genesee settlers. The visit was hailed as the promise of a
new day for the trade of the area, yet there must have been a feeling of
concern among the Rochester merchants who rode or strolled down to
the lower falls on that occasion. However one proceeded, it was a long
jaunt down from the bridge, or back again, and would travelers and
shippers continue to make the trip? The fortunes of Fall Town and
Charlotte, dimmed by the war, had remained dependent upon Rochester,
through which their trade with the interior settlements must necessarily
pass. But now a new settlement appeared on the east bank at the lower

Price, "One Hundred Years of Protestantism in Rochester," R. H. S., Pub., XII,
247-248; Henry O Reilly, Sketches of Rochester, pp. 290, 291.

78 O Reilly, Sketches of Rochester, p. 316.

79 Scrantom, "Old Citizen Letters," Nos. 2-8, Scrapbook, Roch. Hist. Soc.,

PP- 3-7) 8-9.

80 Esther Maria Ward to Mrs. Mehitabel Ward, Rochester, Feb. 10, 1817,
"Diaries and Letters of Esther Maria Ward Chapin: 1815-1823," pp. 21, 25, 233,
typescript, Roch. Hist. Soc. "We on Friday had a pleasant party of about forty
five who came in at six and retired at eleven. ... I have formed some very
pleasant acquaintances since I have been here altho I have not been out at all.
We think of visiting Mrs. Bond one evening this week. It is very lively in Rochester
at present and Mr. Smith thinks it will not be consistent with his business to
visit Bergen this week, altho S. wishes it very much. If my parents have no
objection to my spending a fortnight or three weeks longer in Rochester I shall
feel grateful for the indulgence. If they think it will not be consistent I shall with
pleasure evince my gratitude for their indulgence so far in cheerfully submitting
to their wishes by returning to Bergen whenever they may think proper."

8l Octavius B. Frothingham, Gerrit Smith (New York, 1878), p. 27.

82 Buffalo Hist. Soc., Pub., XXIV, 296. The Ontario was built in Sacketts Harbor
late in 1816, about the same time the Canadians were building the Frontenac, and
both claimed the honor of being the first steamboat on the lake in 1817. A year
later the Walk-in-the-Water appeared on Lake Erie. Capt. James Van Cleve,
"Reminiscences of Early Vessels, Steamboats and Propellers on Lake Ontario,"
Harris Coll., No. 185, contains an .extract which describes the Ontario as no foot
deck, 24 foot beam, 8% foot depth of hold, two masts and side wheel engine.
See the sketch of the boat by Van Cleve, its clerk for several years after 1826.

62 THE WATER-POWER CITY

falls, and its promoters boldly predicted a great future for their town,
named after ancient ^Carthage,

Despite its tardy development, the east bank of the Genesee at the
lower falls possessed real advantages as a town site. The river flats in
the gorge above the second cataract of the lower falls offered convenient
mill sites on the eastern side of the river, while a suitable harbor was
available on the same side (a half-mile south of Fall Town across the
gorge) thus bringing the dock within reasonable reach of the mills. The
extension of the state road north along present Franklin and St. Paul
Streets, together with the newly opened road along the old Indian trail
from Irondequoit Landing, provided excellent trade connections with
the more populous settlements to the southeast. Indeed, it was from the
older towns of Ontario County that the promoters of Carthage hailed,
and their confidence in the future of the settlement as an independent
rival of Rochester, which it might soon hope to overshadow, was stimu
lated by the favorable prospects of Lewiston, similarly located by former
Canandaiguans at the head of lake shipping on the Niagara River. 88

A land company, formed by Elisha B. Strong and several Canan-
daigua associates, undertook the Carthage development on a tract of
one thousand acres overlooking the lower falls. Elisha Johnson, busy
with his own development at the upper falls, was engaged to lay out
the town plat early in 1817. With the construction of a warehouse at
the river s edge as well as a tavern and store on the bank above already
begun, 84 Strong moved down from Canandaigua to assume active leader
ship of the settlement, erecting a sawmill and a gristmill at the brink
of the second cataract. 85 As additional settlers arrived, Brighton District
No. 8 was organized, and a school opened in rented quarters. 86

Yet it was thought the settlement could only achieve its full destiny
by bridging the deep gorge and routing the Canandaigua-Lewiston
traffic over the river at this point. Accordingly the founders of Carthage
organized a bridge company late in 1817 to undertake the bold project
as a direct challenge to Rochester. 87 Unfortunately for Carthage, the
bridge proved more of a problem than its promoters had foreseen, and
meanwhile, before it could be put to the test, an even more daring under
taking, the long debated Erie Canal, was decided upon and routed across
the Genesee at Rochester, thus assuring that village commercial su
premacy in the area.

88 Susan H. Hooker, "The Rise and Fall of Carthage," R. H. S., Pub., II, 205-
208; E. H. Hooker, "Memories of Carthage," R. H, S., Pub., XI, 231-235.

8 * Ontario Repository, Mar. n, 25, May 20, Aug. 5, Sept 9, 1817.

^Hooker, "Memories of Carthage," p. 233; Kelsey, Lives and Reminiscences,
pp. 38-39; Dexter, Biographical Sketches, VI, 281-282.

86 School District No. 8, Carthage, Minute Book, Apr. 8, iSiy-Oct. 3, 1843, MS,
Roch. Hist. Soc.

87 Ontario Repository, Dec. 16, 1817,

ESTABLISHMENT OF ROCHESTERV1LLE 63

THE CANAL ASSURES LEADERSHIP TO ROCHESTER

Talk of a western water route had been recurrent in New York for
nearly a century before the ambitious canal was undertaken. As early
as 1724, Cadwallader Golden in a report to the king on the Indian trade
had remarked on the network of creeks and rivers that facilitated canoe
trade between the Hudson and the Great Lakes. 88 More or less specific
proposals for the improvement of these routes had appeared from time
to time, 89 and the Western Inland Lock Navigation Company s projects
of the last years of the eighteenth century had sought to join and im
prove the upper branches of the Mohawk and Oswego Rivers. 90 But it
was not until the westward movement scattered settlers across the state
that the idea of an artificial waterway direct to Lake Erie appeared. 91
When the legislature in 1808 authorized a preliminary canal survey, the

88 Cadwallader Golden, "Memorial Concerning the Fur Trade of the Province of
New York," 1724, The History of the Five Indian Nations of Canada (London,
1747), Section II, pp. 33-35-

89 In 1768, Gov. Sir Henry Moore suggested to the assembly the advisability
of improving the Mohawk in order to facilitate the fur trade. The petitions of
Christopher Colles from 1784 to 1786 involved the improvement of the Mohawk,
Wood Creek, and Onondaga River route to Lake Ontario. In 1786, Jeffrey Smith
introduced a resolution also aimed at the improvement of this route. A few years
later Elkanah Watson, on a journey to Seneca Lake, was inspired by the idea of
a canal connecting the Onondaga salt springs with Wood Creek and the Mohawk.
In January, 1791, Gov. George Clinton recommended the improvement of the
Mohawk and a survey was made. Gen. Philip Schuyler was instrumental in pushing
through the chartering of the Western Inland Lock Navigation Co., and thought
that the charter should extend to Seneca Lake. Gouverneur Morris about 1800
urged a water communication with Lake Erie, probably by way of Lake Ontario,
although it has been asserted that he referred to an overland route. Noble E.
Whitford, History of the Canal System of the State of New York (Albany, 1906),
I, 20-32, 51-54; Buffalo Hist. Soc., Pub., II, 232-240.

90 "The Inland Lock Navigation Company: First Report of the Directors and
Engineer" (New York, 1796) in Buffalo Hist. Soc., Pub., II, 157-180.

91 Gouverneur Morris suggestion for the overland route is open to doubt. In
1792, the Rev. Francis Adrian Vanderkemp in a letter to Col. Adam G. Mappa,
dated Kingston, July 13, refers in flowery language to the possibility of water
communication from the Hudson to Lake Erie apparently by means of a
series of canals connecting natural streams and creeks. "Extracts from the Vander
kemp Papers," Buffalo Hist. Soc., Pub., II, 39-41. Philip Schuyler and William
Weston, engineer for the Inland Lock Navigation Company, are asserted to have
"frequently talked of water communication by means of canals as far as Lake Erie,
keeping the interior so as to avoid Niagara Falls" as early as 1797. Jesse Hawley
claimed that he first suggested the overland route in 1805, but it was 1807 before
his first essay on the subject appeared in the Commonwealth at Pittsburgh, Pa.,
and Oct 27 of that year when the first of his essays in the Genesee Messenger of
Canandaigua appeared. A few months later, in the legislative session of 1807-1808,
Joshua Forman introduced a resolution for a, survey of a^n pverland route. Whit-
for<* ? I, 51-57.

64 THE WATER-POWER CITY

overland route was only included as an afterthought in the assignment
given James Geddes, the surveyor. 92

On his return from the survey of a possible route around Niagara
Falls to connect Lakes Erie and Ontario, Geddes in December, 1808,
tramped over the snow-covered hills east of the Genesee, seeking the
water summit that an overland canal skirting south of Lake Ontario
would have to cross. Much to his surprise, the problem was not one of
a summit but of the deep Irondequoit Valley. 98 Even here he was
excited to find a series of strange gravel hills which could, he thought,
be bridged together to carry the canal from the Genesee level east to
Palmyra, from which point a natural channel had been prepared by
some kind Providence. The survey revealed what appeared to be a
fortuitous succession of levels, permitting a gradual descent from Lake
Erie to the Genesee, to the Montezuma Marshes, to the Mohawk, and
finally to the Hudson. 94 It presented a breath-taking opportunity which
quickly took hold of the legislature, and a commission was created in
1810 to follow up the preliminary study. 95 When DeWitt Clinton, one
of the commissioners, came west that year, full advantage was taken of
the occasion to make careful observations of trade prospects on the
lower Genesee. 90

Though the War of 1812 shelved the canal project for the time, it
likewise provided such a profitable market for the products of the
Genesee that the return of peace and the loss of army orders intensified
the demand for a trade outlet. The stream of new settlers in 1815
created a local market for food and other provisions, while those areas
enjoying easy access to the Canadian market notably the vicinity of
Oswego, the lower Genesee, and Lewiston 87 experienced a rapid com
mercial growth; yet neither market promised a secure trade. The heavy
charges of one hundred dollars for freighting a ton of produce by wagon
or sled from Buffalo to Albany a fifteen- or twenty-day trip under
favorable circumstances excluded all but the most valuable articles

92 Laws . . . in Relation to the Erie and Champlain Canals, I, 13-38; Dictionary
of American Biography, VII, 204205. >

w Laws . , . in Relation to the Erie and Champlain Canals, I, 28-29, 36-38.
See the Geddes map, Plate III, No. i.

M The Niagara escarpment west of the Genesee and the strange hills (drumlins
and pinnacles) east of that river, as well as the remarkable natural channel east
of Palmyra, began to attract increasing speculation at this time, but the correct
explanation was not discovered until the mid-thirties, and the glacial theory ex
pounded by Professor Louis Agassiz in the late thirties was not applied locally for
another half century. See above, pp. 1-7.

55 Report of the Commissioners appointed by . . . the Senate and Assembly of
the State of New York . . . to Explore the Route of an Inland Navigation from
Hudson s River to Lake Ontario and Lake Erie (N. Y., 1811),

^Campbell, DeWitt Clinton, pp. 112-113. See above, pp 34-3$.

07 Spafford, Gazetteer of the State of New York (Albany, 1824), pp. 188-189,
281-282, 386.

ESTABLISHMENT OF ROCHESTERVILLE 65

from such traffic, denying an eastern market to the increasingly abun
dant products of forest, field, and orchard. 98

A storm of petitions descended upon the legislature in 1816, not only
from such hardy western settlements as Geneva, Canandaigua, Bloom-
field, Avon, and Buffalo," but also from the Mohawk Valley and from
New York City as well. 100 Several regional conventions assembled to
rally support for the canal, as when the leading merchants of the Genesee
Country convened at Canandaigua for this purpose in January, 1817,
with Colonel Nathaniel Rochester of Bloomfield as secretary. 101 The
belief that the future of the state demanded the speedy construction of
a trade artery into the West was gaining control of the legislature, and
there no longer remained any doubt that the canal should extend over
land to Lake Erie rather than by way of Lake Ontario. The growing
strength of the interior settlements as well as the bloody conflict with
Canada had settled that issue. Finally on April 15, 1817, an act author
izing the construction of the Erie Canal became law. 102

Less than a month after its own incorporation, Rochester, thus re
ceived what was in effect its economic charter. To be sure, the canal
act did not determine either the exact route or the full extent of the
projected trade artery, but geology had taken care of Rochester. Scarcely
any other point on the entire route of the canal was so definitely fixed
as the Genesee crossing. Geddes in his preliminary surveys and again
in 1816 had located the crossing between the upper and main falls. 108
Later attempts to find a suitable point for a crossing near the more
populous state road settlements twenty miles further south were des
tined to fail. 104 The forty-mile course of the Genesee through its wide
flood plain south of Rochester made it impossible either to take the
canal through the river at the latter s level without digging a deep and
costly canal ditch, or to cross on an aqueduct at a sufficient height
without building a long and impracticable embankment across the
valley. Indeed, the only point where an aqueduct would be feasible
was just below the upper falls; and if the crossing was to be made at
the river level with the aid of a dam, as proposed in 1816 (and later
effected in the Barge Canal), it would have to be located between those

88 Hibernicus [DeWitt Clinton], Letters on the Natural History and Internal
Resources of the State of New York, pp. 25, 27-29. The thought that the export
of grain would relieve the necessity of converting that product into liquor was
a weighty argument among those who sought a general moral uplift.

99 Laws . . . in Relation to the Erie and Champlain Canals, I, 119-122; Ontario
Repository, Jan. 23, 1816.

100 Laws . . . in Relation to the Erie and Champlain Canals, I, 122-141, passim.

101 Ontario Repository, Jan. 14, 1817.

102 Laws . . . in Relation to the Erie and Champlain Canals, I, 273-278, 358-
364-

10S Laws . . . in Relation to the Erie and Champlain Canals, I, 28-29, 36-38,
map facing pp. 38, 42-46, 145, 212-213.

104 Laws . . . in Relation to the Erie and Champlain Canals, I, 452-453.

66 THE WATER-POWER CITY

falls and the rapids two miles south. 105 If ever the canal should be com
pleted so far west, Rochester was assured the advantages of the new
trade artery.

The villagers themselves had not required even this assurance, so
great was their confidence in the future of Rochester. The old forest
trees were rapidly being cleared away, the swamp lands drained, 106 and
building activities were progressing on all sides. The hundred-odd houses
of 1816 increased to around 250 houses and shops within three years
without satisfying the demand. 107 Colonel Rochester himself contracted
for the erection of several two-story, four-room houses, approximately
twenty by thirty feet in size and equipped with large double fireplaces.
With the construction cost averaging $300 per house, the builders were
usually glad to receive land or lumber in payment. 108 Several lumber
mills were kept busy sawing the logs on shares in lieu of cash. 10 * Among
other millers, Hamlet Scrantom, now in charge of the Red Mill, 110 kept
the great millstones running day and night in an effort to handle the
increasing product of the valley. The exports from the Genesee grew
in proportion. 111

But the skies were not always clear, and early in November, 1817,
they were more than overcast. Several days of heavy rain up the valley
produced swollen streams and converted the Genesee into a rushing
torrent which swept down ominously upon Rochester. Though the vil
lagers rallied to the task of throwing up an embankment along the
raceway in an effort to secure the lowlands at the west end of the bridge
from inundation, several buildings were quickly carried away. The Red
Mill of Ely and Bissell was damaged, John C. Rochester s sawmill
undermined, the head of Johnson s raceway torn out, and a flood of
several inches depth spread over the flats back of the principal stores.
Fortunately, the low west end of the bridge was saved, and altogether
the damage proved to be less than at first expected. 112

News of the flood spread quickly, while dissension as well as false

***** Laws , . . in Relation to the Erie and Champlain Canals, I, 61, 145, 212-213.
106 Doings ... of the Inhabitants ... of Rochester, June 10, 1817.
10T Francis Hall, Travels in Canada and the United States, p. 190; Frances
Wright, Views of Society, p. 165.

108 Contracts between Rochester and Nathaniel Bingham, Sept. 10, 1818, and
between Rochester and Willis Kempshall, Dec. 29, 1818, Rochester Letters. See the
floor plans attached to these contracts.

109 Col. Rochester to Lyman Wait, lease, Oct. i$, 1818, Rochester Letters.

110 Hamlet Scrantom to Abraham Scrantom, Jan. 24, 1819, R. H. S., Pub,, VII, 192.
lu Ontario Repository, Aug. H, 1818. Since the previous Apr. i, the Port of

Rochester had shipped 21,567 barrels of flour; 1,158 barrels of ashes; 569 barrels
of pork; 158 casks of whiskey; and 120,000 double butt standard staves.

112 Enos Pomeroy to Col. Rochester, Rochester, Nov. 5, 1817; John C. Rochester
to Col. Rochester, Nov. 7, 10, 1817, Rochester Letters,

ESTABLISHMENT OF ROCHESTERVILLE 67

rumors threatened to do more serious injury than had the turbulent
Genesee. Charles Carroll, writing from Williamsburg up the valley,
blamed the flood on the Johnson dam, which had been raised a few
inches higher than originally intended. "We have," he advised Colonel
Rochester, "already in public estimation sustained irreparable injury
by the report of the destruction. . . . And the more we suffer in the
eyes of the Public, the better for Brighton. I have learnt enough of
Yankees to dread & fear their wiles & offers. You are too honest and
unsuspicious." m

But neither Colonel Rochester nor the villagers were disheartened.
Indeed, both natural misfortunes and outside opposition served to weld
a stronger community spirit. Thus, when repeated attempts to secure
a bank charter were blocked, 114 Colonel Rochester frequently supplied
the desired credit. On one occasion, when Ely and Company sought to
raise $20,000 for expansion, Colonel Rochester, much against the advice
of his former partners, endorsed the note. 115 A similar unfaltering enter
prise characterized the other principal men of the village. When a fire
with which the local bucket brigade could not cope destroyed the Brown
mills together with a stock of 4,500 bushels of wheat in May, 1818,
the work of reconstruction was immediately undertaken. Despite an
estimated loss of $17,000, the village rallied to the support of Francis
Brown and Company, and by the next January the millstones were
again in operation in a four-story stone structure the largest in the
settlement. 116 The pioneer cotton factory, less successful in raising credit,
suspended activities, 117 but cash was usually available when loads of
grain, ashes, or lumber approached the village, or when the holder of a
favorite lot finally consented to name his price. Indeed, the steady rise
in lot values, in contrast with the trend in some older settlements,
provided a sure sign of vitality.

-<

The village was rapidly attaining a position of considerable influence
in western New York. A second weekly newspaper, established in 1818,
sought its main circulation among the scattered settlements up the
valley. 118 A lower Genesee campaign for a new county with its seat
at Rochester was blocked for the time, 119 but in the political flux which

1U Charles Carroll to Col. Rochester, Williamsburg, Nov. 6, 9, 1817, Rochester
Letters.

114 Ontario Repository, Dec. 26, 1815, Dec. 16, 1817.

115 Articles of agreement between Nathaniel Rochester and Hervey Ely, Elisha
Ely, and others, Aug. i, 1817, Rochester Letters.

^3 Ontario Repository, May 5, 1818; Rochester Telegraph, Jan. 19, 1819.

117 j omi Kelsey, Lives and Reminiscences, pp. 41-43.

118 Ontario Repository, Feb. 24, 1818, gave the first announcement of Peck s
intentions; the first issue was the Rochester Telegraph, July 7, 1818.

119 Ontario Repository, Jan. 24, Dec. 26, 1816, Sept. 30, Oct. 21, Nov. 4, n,
Dec. 16, 23, 1817, Jan. 6, 13, Sept. 8, Nov. 24, Dec. 15, 1818.

68 THE WATER-POWER CITY

followed the disintegration of the Federalist party, 120 the Rochester
interests, by throwing their support to such "regular" and "independent"
candidates as favored the village, were able to control the election of
Ontario and Genesee assemblymen. 121 Colonel Rochester, as a staunch
Jeffersonian, stirred the ire of neighboring Federalists, 122 but the inter
ests of his village, despite its Federalist leanings, 123 were doubtless safe
guarded in Democratic Albany by the proprietor s partisanship.

Though Rochester s economic position was assured, in other respects
the village could not yet rival several of the older settlements of western
New York. The public buildings, academies, and elegant churches that
graced Canandaigua, Buffalo, and Geneva, and to a lesser extent Bath,
Geneseo, and Batavia, were lacking in Rochester, as were the occasional
great houses surrounded by spacious gardens and blooming orchards
which told of the comforts already enjoyed by a few families in these
villages and in Bloomfield, Groveland, and other favored agricultural
areas. 124 But these structures would come in time. Indeed Samuel J.
Andrews, Dr. Matthew Brown, and Dr. Levi Ward were already build
ing comfortable houses and surrounding them with broad gardens. 125
Most of the scattered log cabins with their mud and stick chimneys had
disappeared, and the early frame shanties had been moved back to
serve as stables, giving place to well-built houses and shops equipped
with brick and stone fireplaces.

Rochester could not yet boast the distinguished personalities that
attracted comment from visitors at several of the other villages. 126
Nevertheless, more than a half dozen of her residents, including the
first minister, had enjoyed the benefits of a college education, 127 and
these as well as many others were to be heard from in time. In fact,
the village had much the character of a community that was yet to be
heard from.

When Colonel Rochester finally moved to the falls in the spring of
1818, his stooped figure and white hair, tell-tale signs of his sixty-six
years, marked him as the oldest inhabitant. 123 Two or three of his neigh-

120 Ontario Repository, Apr. 29, 1:817.

m Ontario Repository, Apr. 28, 1818. ^Ontario Repository , Apr, 2, 1816".

^Ontario Repository, May 10, 1814, May 9, 1815, May 7, 1816,

124 Frances Wright, Views of Society, pp. 24-25; Osgood Coll. Ill, No. 84, Roch.
Hist. Soc., describes several of these "great houses."

125 R. H. S., Pub., Ill, 226, 277; VI, 131,

126 Frances Wright, Views of Society, pp. 127, 130; Hibernicus [DeWitt Clinton],
Letters, pp. 216-219.

127 Dr. Frederick F. Backus, Moses Chapin, Joseph Spencer, Elisha B. Strong,
Dr. Levi Ward, and the Reverend Comfort Williams were Yale graduates, while
Elisha Johnson and Ashley Sampson held degrees from Williams and Middlebury
respectively.

128 Nathaniel Rochester, "Autobiography," R. H. S., Pub., Ill, 312.

ESTABLISHMENT OF ROCHESTERVILLE 69

bors had reached their fifties, and a few more their forties, but four-
fifths of the men of the village were well under that age. 129 The number
of children found in Gates and Brighton by the Federal Census of 1820
did not yet equal their proportion in western New York as a whole or
in the older villages, but one out of every four citizens of the two
lower Genesee townships fell in the most vigorous age group, sixteen to
forty-five years, a larger proportion than in any of the surrounding
communities. This contrast becomes even more striking when it is noted
that in the lower Genesee townships fully 57 per cent of this vigorous
age group were men, as against 52 per cent in the Genesee Country as
a whole. 130 Doubtless the settlers did not regard the scarcity of women
as a cause for rejoicing, but, paradoxical as it may sound, it signified
the community s vibrant growth.

To a considerable extent Rochester was the creation of the vigorous
youth of western New York. Approximately one half of the merchants
and artisans who located at the falls between 1813 and 1818 came from
earlier Genesee Country settlements. Of 60 persons associated with the
village during these years, 23 had previous Genesee residences, 10
hailed from central or northern New York, 5 from the vicinity of
Albany, 15 directly from New England, one each from Pennsylvania,
Canada, and Germany, while the previous locations of the others is not
known. Several of those who came directly to Rochester from the East
were relatives or former neighbors of Genesee Country pioneers who
were either themselves moving to the village or wished to make invest
ments there under the watchful eyes of their friends.

But if Rochester was a child of the Genesee Country, it was by the
same token a grandchild of New England. 131 Of the 60 men considered
above, at least 54 were born in that section. The contribution from the
South in the sizable Rochester families and the 27 Negroes, including
9 slaves, living in Gates and Brighton in 1820 just sufficed for the
development of a diversified community pattern. 132

Although Rochester was by no means the leading settlement in west
ern New York in 1818, it had in spite of its youth become a thriving

129 The names and dates of 75 men resident at Rochester before 1820 together
with their previous residence and place and date of birth have been compiled as a
basis for this and other generalizations below.

180 U. S. Census (1820). Calculations from the data given.

181 Elizabeth Turner, "The Settlement of Western New York before 1825,"
M.A. thesis at Univ. Roch. in 1934. Miss Turner examined the records of 234
groups of settlers in the Genesee Country and found that 103 came from New
England, 73 from New York, $ from abroad, and 53 from Pennsylvania, New
Jersey, and Maryland. Most of the Southerners, as she discovered, located in the
Steuben County settlements.

1S2 The information concerning these early settlers has been gathered from
many sources including The Pioneer Association Records; KLelsey, Lives and
Reminiscences; Annah B. Yates, "First Church Chronicles."

yo THE WATER-POWER CITY

village in what was still essentially a village world. "Populous and
opulent" Canandaigua had in three decades developed an elegance and
charm that captivated all visitors, yet it numbered scarcely 2000 citi
zens and had only 350 houses and shops in i820. 138 Geneva, Ithaca, and
Utica, each with upwards of a thousand residents, as well as Bath,
Batavia, and Oswego of more modest proportions, were all incorporated
villages with established institutions. 134 Buffalo, in spite of its destruc
tion in 1813, had been quickly rebuilt and already contained around
300 buildings, while the township as a whole totalled 2095 inhab
itants. 135 Indeed, west of the city of Schenectady, with its 500 houses
and shops and 3939 inhabitants, only Canandaigua, Utica, and Buffalo
in New York State exceeded Rochester in population. Even the capital
city of Albany, proudly entering upon its third century, had but 2000
buildings and 12,630 citizens, 136 although it stood tenth in size among
the cities of the country.

Against this background, 187 Rochester s growth in six years to 1049,
and to 1502 two years later when the Federal Census enumerated the
residents on both sides of the river, was creditable as well as gratifying. 188
Everard Peck, proprietor of the Rochester Telegraph, the recently estab
lished second weekly, viewed the increase in population with pleasure
and boldly predicted that it might safely be expected to continue and
even double in another decade. 189 Colonel Rochester, with similar opti
mism, settled himself comfortably in the large house built by Dr. Ward
and leisurely began to set out some young pear trees in the garden over
looking the river, one block from the Four Corners. 140

188 Frances Wright, Views of Society, pp. 127^130; Spafford, Gazetteer (1824),
pp. 80-82.

134 Spafford, passim.

186 Spafford, pp. 67-68.

186 Spafford, pp. 15, 16; U. S. Census (1820).

137 The village background extended throughout the country, in which only
5 cities had Upwards of 25,000 inhabitants, with New York at the top boasting
only 123,706. There was not a city in the country with over 10,000 which could
not be reached by ocean going vessels, and there were only u such cities. Among
the interior settlements only St. Louis, Cincinnati, Pittsburg, Lexington, Louis
ville, and Chillicothe exceeded Canandaigua in size 1

188 R. H. S., Pub., X, 262; Tekgrtph, Oct. 3, 1820.

189 Telegraph, Oct. 3, 1820; see Peck s obituary written by Thurlow Weed,
Albany Evening Journal, Feb. 21, 1854, quoted in part by William F, Peck,
Semi-Centennial History, pp. 664-665.

140 Enos Pomeroy to Col. Rochester, Nov. 5, 1817, Rochester Letters; Edwin
Scrantom, "Reminiscences of Nathaniel Rochester," R. H. S., Pub., Ill, 316.

CHAPTER IV

THE BOOM TOWN: 1818-1828
POPULATION AND ECONOMIC GROWTH

BEFORE Colonel Rochester s pear trees could produce their first
fruit the prospects of the village were radically transformed,
and the orchard had soon to be uprooted. The modest develop
ment anticipated by the local optimists of 1820 fell far short of that
which actually occurred when the Erie Canal channelled the increasing
flood of westward migrants through Rochester. The town s growth
during the twenties proved as great a surprise to the villagers them
selves as to everybody else, for never before had America witnessed
the phenomenon of such a town springing up almost overnight in the
midst of a forest. 1 The boom town was soon to become a standard
feature of the westward movement as the great migration poured
through various focal points in its rush across the continent, and many
a louder and more protracted boom would be heard, but meanwhile the
experience left its mark on Rochester.

There was something gangling and disjointed not quite callow, but
certainly not urbane about the village during the decade of its most
rapid growth. Rival factions with conflicting standards and divergent
interests quickly gained a foothold, and the settlement was distracted
for several years by bickering internal quarrels. The unprecedented
expansion prompted an early assertion of local aspirations for autonomy,
giving the town something of the character of an aggressive intruder
among older communities. "Froth & puffing is the order of the day,"
declared one recent arrival from Yale, who regretted in 1818 to find
that, "Connecticut maxims & habits are reversed." 2 Yet the "mush
room" continued to grow. Almost giddy from the stimulus of the canal,
Rochester preened itself as a representative of the new West. Two
more decades were to pass before this strain in its early character was
completely outgrown, though the end of the twenties brought the first
efforts at self-discipline.

1 Rochester s growth from 331 in December, -1815, to 1049 in September, 1818,
may have had earlier precedents, but the town s increase to 7669 in December,
1826, and to 9207 in 1830 achieved a rate of growth for which there was no previous
exampte. See Social Statistics of Cities, U. S. Census (1880), vols. XVIII, XIX.

2 Joseph Spencer to Elisabeth Selden, Rochester, July 9, 1818, Elisabeth Selden
Spencer Eaton Letters, courtesy of Mrs. Elizabeth Selden Rogers, New York City.

72 THE WATER-POWER CITY

THE STRUGGLE FOR INDEPENDENCE

If the settlers at Rochesterville in 1820 failed to anticipate the re
markable growth that lay ahead, they were none the less determined to
free themselves from dependence upon neighboring rivals. Canandaigua
in particular seemed to obstruct Rochester s path, for its leaders envied
the mill town s rising influence. The issue was first joined in the struggle
for a separate county, but it appeared in other respects as well, notably
in the protracted effort to establish the Bank of Rochester. Unfortu
nately, the close harmony of local interests, which characterized the
drive for the county, disappeared in the more complex battle for the
bank.

The campaign for a separate county was stubbornly blocked for five
years while charges of "selfish local interests" and "ambitious lawyers"
flew back and forth between the rival settlements. 8 The agitation started
in January, 1815, when Francis Brown, even before the news of peace
arrived, gave notice of an application for a lower Genesee county to be
established within three years, or as soon as the area should number
15,000 residents. 4 A subscription circulated in 1816 pledged $6,722 for
the necessary county buildings, 5 and public meetings convened repeat
edly at Christopher s and Ensworth s taverns to agitate the cause. Three
separate delegations bore petitions for the new county to Albany from
the Ontario towns of Brighton, Pittsford, Henrietta, Perinton, and Pen-
field, and from the Genesee County towns of Gates, Riga, Parma, Ogden,
Murray, and Sweden. 6

To the enterprising settlers on the lower Genesee, the logic of their
demand seemed clear. Now that two bridges had been built and others
were in prospect the river no longer appeared a dividing line. Indeed, it
had long since become by virtue of its facilities as a trade artery and
power source as well as its flood hazard a powerful unifying force.
Moreover, the inconvenience of travel over difficult roads thirty or forty
miles to the respective county seats was becoming more of a handicap
as the volume of land and other legal transactions multiplied. With
the growth of affairs in the two large counties, activity so crowded their
offices that two or three days no longer sufficed for a visit to court.

8 Ontario Repository, Sept. 30, Oct. ax, Nov. 4, 1817; Jan. 6, Nov. 24, Dec. 15,
i8i8j The Penny Preacher, Sept. 6, 1842.

4 Ontario Repository, Jan. 24, 1815.

c "Subscription for the Court House & Gaol, December 18, 1816," Rochester
Letters, Roch. Hist. Soc.

* Ontario Repository, Dec. 26, 1815; Dec. 16, 23, i8i7;^Sept. 8, 1818; Rochester
Gazette, Sept. 19, 1820; Rochester Telegraph, Nov. 28, 1820; "Petitions for the
Division of Genesee & Ontario Counties," ( i8i6, 1817, 1818, 1819, 1820, MSS, Roch.
Hist. Sob.; Howard L. Osgood, "The Struggle for Monroe County," R. H. S., Pub.,
HI, 127-136.

THE BOOM TOWN 73

A fair consideration of the welfare of the lower Genesee settlements
seemed to require the immediate location there of a properly equipped
county seat. 7

But the issue became entangled with regional and political jealousies.
Neither Canandaigua nor Batavia wished to see its sphere of influence
reduced, and already the voting strength of these wide-spreading
counties was a matter of concern to the fairly evenly matched Clin-
tonian, Bucktail, and Federalist factions at Albany. 8 Though a division
of these two vast counties would ultimately be necessary, Avon s aspira
tions to become the seat of a long county straddling the Genesee from
the lake southward to Steuben, and Palmyra s similar dream of pro
viding the seat for another long county bordering the lake from Sodus
Bay to Irondequoit conflicted with Rochester s plans. 9 Canandaigua
and Batavia appealed for delay, and meanwhile their judges made an
earnest effort to clear their dockets by conducting court from sun-up
until dusk with the hope of demonstrating an ability to perform their
functions promptly. 10

The weight of numbers postponed the new county, but the same
factor ultimately gave Rochester the victory. Early in 1819, when the
election of state representatives was fought out in Ontario on this issue,
the anti-divisionists won by a small majority. 11 Yet even in this contest
the sentiment for division dominated the growing townships bordering
the river and the lake, and by uniting them behind a demand for three
new counties the Rochester divisionists soon outweighed the opposition
of Canandaigua and Batavia. 12 Already in 1820 the area of the proposed
new counties numbered a total of 68,000 settlers as against 53,000 in
the reduced territory of Ontario and Genesee. The problem of agreeing
upon a partition of towns between the projected counties remained,
and here again numbers favored Rochester. 13

Yet only by mustering all its strength did Rochester triumph. Elisha
B. Strong of Carthage, won over from an earlier hostility to the proposed
county, 14 journeyed with Colonel Rochester to engineer the final cam
paign in Albany. After many discouraging delays the legislature acted

7 Jesse Hawley to Col. Rochester, Canandaigua, Aug. 2, 1817 ; William B.
Rochester to Col. Rochester, Albany, Mar. 27, 1817, Rochester Letters.

8 Matthew Brown to Roswell Babbitt, Albany, Jan. 30, 1819, Autograph Letter
Coll., Roch. Hist. Soc.; Osgood, "Monroe County," p. 127; Alexander Flick, ed.,
History of the State of New York (New York, 1933-37), VI, 44-53.

9 Osgood, "Monroe County," pp. 130, 133-135.

10 Osgood, "Monroe County," p. 134.

11 Ontario Repository, Apr. 13, May 4, 1819.

12 Col. Rochester to Abelard Reynolds, Albany, Jan. 9, 24, Feb. 2, 7, 13, 1821,
Rochester Letters.

18 N. Y. State Census (1855), p. xxxiii.

^Ontario Repository, Apr. 13, 1819. E. B. Strong was on the anti-divisionist
ticket in 1819. See above p. 62.

74 THE WATER-POWER CITY

on February 20, 1821, to create Monroe and Livingston Counties, defer
ring the organization of Wayne another two years. Named after the
President, who had recently skirted the area, 15 Monroe County secured
its original claim and portions of Caledonia, Rush, and Mendon on the
south a territory of 607 square miles, slightly larger than any of the
other new counties. This region, despite its delayed settlement, con
tained 27,288 residents, and by 1825 exceeded reduced Ontario. 16

The achievement of local autonomy set the stage for keen party
rivalry. The traditional Republican sentiment of the larger towns west
of the river assured victory over the old Federalism of the eastern
townships. But as the Federalist party was rapidly disintegrating, many
of its local leaders joined the Republicans in time to share in the
appointments. Thus Elisha B. Strong became the First Judge of the
Court of Common Pleas, and Elisha Ely was commissioned Surrogate.
John Bowman, a staunch Republican from Clarkson, received another
judgeship, while Colonel Rochester was chosen County Clerk. Though
such a division proved scarcely satisfactory to the more confirmed
partisans, indignation centered on the appointment of Timothy Childs
from Canandaigua as District Attorney over the heads of local as
pirants. 17 This early instance of localism was soon forgotten, however,
for the rapidly growing community felt prone to extend a generous
welcome to able newcomers.

The location of a county seat at Rochester attracted a group of
enterprising lawyers, whose presence quickened the political, social, and
intellectual life of the community. Ashley Sampson, a graduate of
Middlebury, had studied law in the East and practiced briefly in Pitts-
ford before moving to Rochester in iSig. 18 Vincent Mathews, the first
lawyer admitted to the bar of Ontario County in 1790 and already a
veteran jurist and legislator from western New York, was among those
prompted in 1821 to locate at Rochester, where he soon became a
respected leader of the profession. 19 James K. Livingston hastened west
from Dutchess County, and Daniel D. Barnard from Canandaigua;
young Addison Gardiner of Manlius, passing through Rochester on his
way to Detroit, determined to hang his shingle here instead and invited

15 Col. Rochester to Abelard Reynolds, Albany, Feb. 17, 20, 1821, Rochester
Letters. The act became a law on Feb. 23, 1821.

ie N. Y. State Census (1855), pp. xxxiii, xxxiv, 277.

1T Col. Rochester to D. E. Evans, Rochester, May 17, 1821, Rochester Letters;
Telegraph, May 15, 1821 ; "Elisha Ely," in Kelsey, Lives and Reminiscences, p,p. 90-
92; Timothy Childs obituary, Rochester Republican, Dec. 14, 1847.

18 Samson Note Book, X, 359-360, Roch. Hist, Soc.

19 William B. Rochester to Col. Rochester, Bath, Feb. 4, -1821, Rochester Letters;
Henry O Reilly, Sketches of Rochester, p. 322; see obituary in Democrat, Sept. 24,
1846.

THE BOOM TOWN 75

his friend, Thurlow Weed, to follow Mm. 20 Not only did a distinguished
bar quickly gather, but also a plenitude of aspiring politicians & cir
cumstance soon abundantly evident.

While the political pot was beginning to boil, the essential county
functions were hastily provided. Three sites were offered for the court
house two east of the river but that formerly set aside by Rochester,
Fitzhugh, and Carroll was duly accepted as the most central and con
veniently located. 21 A contract was let for the erection of the county
buildings, 22 and in the meantime the first session of the Court of Com
mon Pleas convened in May in the newly added loft of Ensworth s
Tavern at the Four Corners. 23 Apparently the judicial functions were
organized none too soon, for "an alarming increase in petty crimes and
misdemeanors" prompted the selection of a grand jury to inquire into
the activity of the "grocery and dram shops in the village." ** Indeed,
it proved necessary to occupy a section of the county jail before that
structure was completed. 25 Finally in September, 1822, an attractive
stone court house with Greek Revival facades stood ready for use. 28

The early twenties witnessed an even more crucial battle for inde
pendence in the financial field. Albany again provided the scene for the
conflict in which leading Canandaiguans soon became involved. Though
a strong anti-bank sentiment in the legislature delayed action, after
repeated reversals the movement for an independent Rochester bank
was finally carried to success by the joint pressure of local merchants
in quest of capital and Eastern investors seeking a market for their
funds.

The campaign for a Rochester bank grew out of an increasing need
for credit. After the first unsuccessful appeal for a charter, filed late
in 1815, representative villagers petitioned each succeeding legislature,
but the dominant political faction at Albany, believing that the depre
ciated state of the paper circulated by the existing banks could be
remedied by limiting the number of such institutions, rejected every

20 Thurlow Weed, Autobiography (Boston, 1883), I, 91-92, 95-100; "Daniel D.
Barnard," Dictionary of American Biography, I, 617; Addison Gardiner: In
Memoriam (Rochester, 1883).

21 Telegraph, Mar. 6, July 3, 1821 ; Osgood, "Monroe County, pp. 135-136.

22 New York Assembly Journal, 1825, pp. 179, 222. Josiah Bissell, one of the
contractors, received $200 relief for losses incurred in removing stone from the site.

28 Oswald P. Backus, "History of the Monroe County Court," R. H. S., Pub.,

IV, 193-196. , . . ,,

24 "History of the Monroe County Court," p. 199- Backus is quoting apparently
from the grand jury report.

25 Telegraph, Dec. 25, 1821.

^Backus, "Monroe County Court," p. 196; Directory of the Village of
Rochester (Rochester, 1827), p. 124.

76 THE WATER-POWER CITY

application. 27 Frustrated in this effort, Rochester merchants had to
resort to Canandaigua, Utica, and Geneva banks, an inconvenience the
more serious as the volume of business increased at the falls. 28 The
visionary leaders of Carthage made an unsuccessful bid for a branch
of the United States Bank in i8i8, 29 and shortly after the organization
of the county it was suggested that a branch of a neighboring bank
might be located at Rochester, thus obviating the objections of politi
cians to the creation of a new institution. Both the Ontario Bank in
Canandaigua and the Bank of Utica hastily applied for this privilege,
rallying the support of their respective Rochester friends. 30

The rival petitions split the village into hostile camps. The simulated
good feeling under the dominant Republican banner, which had elected
Colonel Rochester to the legislature in 1821, disappeared in the face
of a frigid January storm of resurgent factionalism. Personal and group
antagonisms, stubborn political animosities, theological differences, and
the backwash of economic misfortune 31 joined to produce a bitter
quarrel, revealing that the village had yet to develop an urbane self-
restraint. ft

Colonel Rochester s white hairs bristled at the thought of a Canan
daigua branch in Rochester. His own relations with the Ontario Bank
had never been too friendly, resulting partly, as he supposed, from
jealousy of his growing village. 82 Rebuffed on one or two occasions,
Colonel Rochester had turned to Eastern sources for his funds, to
Hagerstown, Baltimore, and New York, and he had early become a
stockholder and director of the Bank of Utica. As a branch of that
institution would, he was convinced, provide the desired banking serv
ices without meddling in community affairs, the Rochester family and
their associates supported its application. 38

Colonel Rochester quickly identified the supporters of the Canandai-

27 Ontario Repository, Dec. 26, 1815; Dec. 16, 1817; New York Senate Journal
(1816), pp. 157-158. See also Robert E. Chaddock, The Safety Fund Banking
System in New York State (National Monetary Comrn., Washington, 1910), pp.
233-257.

** Telegraph, Dec. 17, 1822; Assembly Journal (1824), ,p. 87.

29 Levi H. Clarke to Joshua Stow, Carthage, Mar. 17, 1818, "Memorial to the
President and Directors of the Bank of the U. S.," R. H. S., Pub., II, 222-231.

80 Telegraph, Feb. 19, 1822; "Petition of the President and Directors of the
Ontario Bank for a Branch at Rochesterville," signed by N. Gorham, Dec. 12,
1821; "Petition of the Inhabitants of Rochester to have a Branch of the Ontario
Bank established in the Village," signed by 84 villagers, Jan. 18, 1822 ; "Petition
for the removal of the Utica Bank s Canandaigua Branch to Rochester," signed
by 22 villagers, Jan. 10, 1822, Rochester Letters.

81 See below, pp. 85, 127, 130-131.

82 Col. Rochester to A. Douglas, Rochester, May n, 1824, Rochester Letters.
88 Rochester Letters, 1814-1824. See especially N. T. Rochester to Col. Rochester,

Rochester, Marl 5, 1822.

THE BOOM TOWN 77

gua branch as New England-Federalists. Unfortunately, they greatly
outnumbered the aged Colonel s backers, in spite of the increasing
ramifications of his family ties. 34 From the angle of the opposition, the
Rochester clan itself appeared a major grievance, for it was becoming
difficult to turn about in the bustling village without stumbling over a
member of the proprietor s family. But it was not so difficult, in the
Colonel s opinion, as to avoid a Yankee bristling with Presbyterian
virtue and shrewd schemes for fat profits. Had he not, the old man
reflected, given a hand to more than a few of these villagers when
adversity overtook them in the early days? And now, in place of
gratitude, they supported his inveterate opponents in Canandaigua! 35

The fate of the proposed branches soon became entangled in state
politics. An effort to conciliate both factions coupled the rival applica
tions in one bill, which at first made rapid progress. When Canandaigua
Federalists proposed, as a concession to Republican sound-money doc
trine, to require both banks to redeem the paper of their existing
branches before making the intended removal, the amendment speedily
passed. But Colonel Rochester saw the measure as a stratagem designed
to discourage the Utica Bank from moving its Canandaigua branch
under conditions which would redound to the advantage of the Ontario
Bank. The Colonel decidedly preferred a further postponement of the
issue, and on his recommendation the bill was defeated at the third
reading. 36

The outcome proved not unwelcome in Rochester, where the desire for
an independent bank continued strong. 37 Meanwhile, Colonel Rochester
sounded out the possibility of securing a branch of the Manhattan
Company of New York, 38 while E. B. Strong developed an agency for
the Ontario Bank, serving Rochester in an informal private banking
capacity. 89

The campaign shortly revived, and "nine several petitions of sundry
inhabitants of the County of Monroe" greeted the next legislature. 40
Colonel Rochester, giving place in the assembly to his Republican friend,
Judge Bowman, cooperated in drafting a bank charter which named a
suitable board of commissioners to supervise the sale of stock and the

84 See below, pp. 139-140.

S5 Hervey Ely to Col. Rochester, Mar. 12, 1823, Col. Rochester to A. Douglas,
Rochester, May n, 1824, Rochester Letters.

86 Col. Rochester to E. B. Strong, Albany, Feb. 25, 1822, Rochester Letters;
Assembly Journal ( 1822), pp. 436-437.

87 N. T. Rochester to Col. Rochester, Rochester, May 5, 1822, Dr. M. Brown to
Col. Rochester, Rochester, Mar. 9, 1822, E. B. Strong to Col. Rochester, Rochester,
Mar. n, 1822, Rochester Letters.

88 Daniel Penneld to Col. Rochester, New York, Apr. 30, 1822, Rochester Letters.

89 Col. Rochester to A. Douglas, Rochester, May 15, 1824, Rochester Letters.
40 Telegraph , Dec. 17, 1822; Assembly Journal (1823), pp, 31, 262, 350.

78 THE WATER-POWER CITY

election of directors. Despite the appearance in Albany of Josiah Bissell,
an opponent of all banks, bearing a petition to that effect from a number
of his friends, 41 the bill made some progress before dying in committee. 42
Back in Rochester the smoldering factional jealousies obstructed the
selection of a legislative agent to renew the campaign. Finally, a youth
ful journeyman printer associated with Everard Peck on the Telegraph
was suggested, and with some trepidation Thurlow Weed was sent to
Albany as the bank committee s "legislative solicitor." 4S

Weed, who had already won his spurs as a Clintonian editor, soon
became engrossed at Albany in negotiations between the Clinton, Adams,
and Clay supporters over state and national issues not, however, for
getting the Rochester bank. Despite the Bucktail faction s general hos
tility to banks, except of course good Republican ones, Weed s efforts
in behalf of the Rochester bank prospered as long as he did not insist on
Clintonian control, and he did not make such a demand. Probably his
Rochester friends did not anticipate early results, as they failed to
forward their revised bill, naming a Clintonian board of directors in the
charter, until after the earlier draft, under the watchful care of Judge
Bowman, was reported out of committee. 44 Even after this initial slip, the
Rochester Clintonians, confident that their numerical advantage assured
control, directed Weed to support the measure as it stood. 45 The legisla
ture obliged by shelving the renewed petitions for Ontario and Utica
branches in Rochester and passed the Bank of Rochester bill, entrusting
the organization to a group of commissioners headed by Colonel
Rochester. 46 Weed received due honors upon his return, and the state
was to hear more from this fledgling politician, 47 but the bank affair
had not yet ended.

Rivalry over the bank s control increased in intensity with each step
in its organization. When the subscription books were opened at the
Christopher House, the $250,000 in capital stock provided for under

41 Assembly Journal (1823), p. 514; J. Spencer to Col. Rochester, Albany,
Feb. 19, 1823, Rochester Letters.

42 Assembly Journal (1823), pp. 378, 742, 797, 91$; J. Spencer to Col. Rochester,
Albany, Feb. 19, 1823, Rochester Letters.

48 Glyndon G. Van Deusen, "Thurlow Weed in Rochester," Rochester History
(April, 1940), pp. 5-6; Weed, Autobiography, pp. 104-107.

44 John Bowman to Col. Rochester, Albany, Mar. 8, 1824, Rochester Letters;
Matthew Brown to Thurlow Weed, Rochester, Jan. i, 1824, E. B. Strong to
Weed, Clyde, Jan. 26, 1824, Weed Papers, Univ. Rochester.

45 E. Pomeroy to Weed, Rochester, Jan. 23, 26, Feb. 4, 1824, Weed Papers;
Van Deusen, "Thurlow Weed," pp. 6-10.

^Telegraph, Mar. 16, 1824; Assembly Journal (1824), pp. 87, 184, 236, 279,
486, 603, 658, 741, 909, 967, 980, 997-998. See also Chaddock, Safety Fund Bank
ing System, p. 245.

47 Weed, Autobiography , pp. 106-107, 157-162. The Rochester committee raised
a total of $1000 to defray the expenses of their solicitor in Albany.

THE BOOM TOWN 79

the charter was oversubscribed fivefold. 48 Many came prepared to enter
applications for friends unable to attend, and Colonel Rochester him
self had a pocket full of out-of-town applications, together with their
first cash payments, not to mention proxies. 49 It would be necessary for
the commissioners to scale down many, if not all, subscriptions, and
the villagers awaited the outcome with anxiety.

Among the considerations weighed by the commissioners was the oft-
expressed desire to bring Eastern capital into the village. 50 Erasmus D.
Smith, Judge Bowman, and Matthew Brown, as well as Colonel
Rochester, had collected applications from investors in New York,
Albany, and Troy, 51 while Abraham M. Schermerhorn of Cherry Valley,
a candidate for the post of cashier, was eager to secure a block of stock.
Judge E. B. Strong s request for 400 shares doubtless cloaked a Can-
andaigua investor, and the same suspicion attached to other subscrip
tions. Though the commissioners were reluctant to admit any capital
which might be used in the interests of Rochester s old rival, they did
grant large blocks of stock to such Eastern investors as Dr. Russell
Forsythe of Albany, Alanson Douglas of Troy, and others in New York
City. Several Eastern applications and many from older Genesee
Country settlements were rejected, while most local applicants received
only a fraction of their subscriptions. 52

Any apportionment was certain to give offense, but the outburst of
indignation which greeted the work of the commissioners exceeded in
fury all previous disputes. It was immediately noted that Douglas and
Forsythe, who together held a controlling block of stock, were Bucktail
friends of Bowman and Rochester and had apparently entrusted their
proxies to that faction. The Rochester Telegraph printed a bitter attack
on the commissioners by E. B. Strong 5S to which Colonel Rochester
answered with heat in the Monroe Republican. 54 A remonstrance, signed
by twenty-one villagers, declared "their intention to withdraw their
business from the institution while it remained under the control of
Nathaniel Rochester and John Bowman." 65 Many who refused to sign
this violent attack nevertheless attended a dinner to Samuel Works,

48 Telegraph, May 4, n, 1824. The subscription reached $1,500,000.

49 Rochester Letters, April and May, 1824.

150 E. Pomeroy to Weed, Rochester, Jan. 23, 26, 1824, Weed Papers.

sl john Bowman to Col. Rochester, Albany, Mar. 8, -1824, Philip Kearny to
Col. Rochester, New York, Apr. 24, 29, May i, 1824, Rochester Letters. Erasmus
D. Smith, of Hadley, Mass., who arrived in Rochester about 1822, must be dis
tinguished from E. Darwin Smith who came from Madison County in 1828. The
former was Democratic in politics and the latter, a judge, was an Anti-Mason and
a Whig until 1848 when he likewise became a Democrat.

62 Col. Rochester to Ira West, Rochester, May 17, 1824, Rochester Letters.

63 Telegraph, June 15, 29, 1824.

54 Col. Rochester to D. Sibley, Rochester, July 31, 1824, Rochester Letters.

55 Remonstrance to R. Forsythe, May n, 1824, Rochester Letters.

8o THE WATER-POWER CITY

leader of the remonstrants, 56 while a new petition was circulated for the
establishment of a Canandaigua branch at Rochester. 57

Concerned over the safety of his investment, Alanson Douglas
hastened westward from Troy in an effort to moderate the conflict by
voting his stock in person and conciliating, if possible, some of the less
violent opponents. A mixed board of directors included Matthew Brown,
Levi Ward, Enos Stone, Frederick Bushnell, and James Seymour from
among the less truculent Clintonians, balanced by E. D. Smith, John
Bowman, Charles H. Carroll, Abelard Reynolds, and Jonathan Child as
supporters of Colonel Rochester. Benjamin Campbell and Abraham
Schermerhorn were added as large independent stockholders. Colonel
Rochester became president with the understanding that he would re
tire at the end of the year, and Schermerhorn was engaged as cashier at
a salary of $1500 with an allowance of $200 for house rent until a
banking house could be provided. 5 *

Unhappily the election of officers served to inflame rather than
appease the opposition. Sharp words were exchanged even between
members of the same church, 69 and the rival Rochester weeklies gave
free expression to bitter charges and counter-charges. 60 The quarrel
clouded the celebration of Independence Day when many of the more
unrelenting opponents of Colonel Rochester, the orator of the day, re
fused to attend. 81

Despite Colonel Rochester s expectations, the clamor failed to die
down. It provided, instead, a convenient issue for agitation by the
People s party, organized locally that fall by Clintonian friends of
Thurlow Weed, whom they sent to the legislature, 62 The Bucktails were
widely defeated, although Judge Bowman, with Genesee County sup
port, won a seat in the state senate. 63 Bowman, however, was becoming
uneasy over the violent criticism suffered as a result of his connection
with the Rochester bank, while Douglas and other Eastern stockholders

150 Col. Rochester to A. Douglas, Rochester, May u, 15, 17, 1824, Rochester
Letters.

BT Telegraph, June 29, 1824.

58 Col. Rochester to A. M. Schermerhorn, Rochester, June 3, 1824, Schermer
horn to Rochester, June 16, 1824, Rochester to A. Douglas, Rochester, July 2, 1824,
Rochester Letters.

59 Col. Rochester to A. Douglas, Rochester, July 16, 1824, A. Douglas to
Rochester, Troy, Aug. a, 1824, Rochester Letters.

60 Telegraph, June 15, 1824; A. Douglas to Col. Rochester, Troy, July 10, 1824,
Rochester Letters.

61 Col. Rochester to A. Douglas, Rochester, July 6, 1824, Rochester Letters.

62 Weed, Autobiography, pp. 157-^162; Van Deusen, "Thurlow Weed," pp. 8-xo;
Dkon Ryan Fox, The Decline of Aristocracy in the Politics of New York (New
York, 1919), pp. 288-301.

68 Monroe Republican, Nov. 18, 1823.

of (he Country betwvr
tlir OSJfEMgB

IV. i. JAMES GEDDES SURVEY MAP OF THE PROPOSED CANAL EAST or THE

GENESEE, 1809

IV. 2. ROCHESTER IN 1815, AS SHOWN IN THE FIELD NOTES OF LEMUEL

FOSTER

V. i. VIEW OF THE MAIN FALLS AND VILLAGE, 1830

V. 2. VIEW OF THE FIRST AQUEDUCT FROM THE EAST

THE BOOM TOWN 81

began to regret their investments in a community ruled by such violent
jealousies. 64 Colonel Rochester himself desired an early retirement from
his thankless position. The} agreed, however, that the stability of the
institution required their faithful adherence until the enterprise should
be securely launched. 65

The bank weathered the storm of its first months more successfully
than might have been expected. Perhaps there was something to the
Colonel s contention that the more reckless speculators, by voluntary
abstention, freed the bank from embarrassing burdens at the same time
that substantial friends were encouraged to exert themselves in its
behalf. 66 Actually the bounding growth of the village was chiefly re
sponsible for the bank s thriving condition. A central property was ac
quired, equipped with a house adequate for the bank, the cashier s
family, and the directors office, with a stable in the rear backing on
the Court House Square. 67 Schermerhorn proved both a reliable cashier
and a conciliatory influence a valuable addition to the village. 68

Yet the wide success of the Clintonians or People s party promised
trouble for the Bank of Rochester in the forthcoming legislature. The
application for a rival bank might succeed, Douglas feared, or a hostile
branch might be permitted to locate in the village, or an investigation
might be ordered which could result in a revocation of the charter. 69 To
head off these contingencies, Douglas disposed of some of his stock,
while Bowman and Rochester decided to resign as directors. In a last
effort to save the institution from complete opposition control, the
Bucktail faction hoped to name a president to balance the Clintonian
directors. Colonel Rochester persuaded his son-in-law, Jonathan Child,
to become a candidate and lined up what promised to be a majority in
his behalf. A hopeless division pccurred, however, when the directors
met, preventing a choice until Schermerhorn switched his vote to
Dr. Levi Ward, thus giving him a bare majority. 70

64 A. Douglas to Col. Rochester, Troy, Nov. 18, 1824; J. B. Varnum to Col.
Rochester, New York, Aug. 30, 1824, Rochester Letters.

^ 5 A. Douglas to Col. Rochester, Aug. 2, Nov. 18, 1824, Rochester Letters.

66 Col. Rochester to A. Douglas, Rochester, July 16, Dec. 16, 1824, Rochester
Letters.

67 Col. Rochester to A. Douglas, Rochester, July 2, 1824, Rochester Letters.
The property, 66 by 165 feet, cost with improvements $3400, a sharp advance from
the $50 valuation on the lot a decade before.

68 Biographical Directory of the American Congress (Washington, 1928), p. 1498;
see his obituary, Rochester Daily Union, Aug. 27, 1855.

69 A. Douglas to Col. Rochester, Troy, Nov. 18, Dec. 31, 1824, Rochester Letters.

70 Same to same, Troy, Nov. 18, Dec. 31, 1824, Col. Rochester to Douglas,
Rochester, Dec. 16, 1824, Rochester Letters; Telegraph, Dec. 28, 1824. For an
account of Jonathan Child s career, see Kelsey, Lives and Reminiscences, pp. 67-68 ;
Barton s Obituary Scrapbook, p. 224, Roch. Hist. Soc.

82 THE WATER-POWER CITY

It was a bitter experience for the aged proprietor to see a member of
Ms family "sacrificed to gratify a few enemies to me and to the Bank." 71
Possibly the shift in leadership helped to defeat the almost successful
application for a Merchants , Millers and Mechanics Bank for
Rochester when the legislature met the next spring. 72 As the year rolled
around, most of the Colonel s friends among the directors were re
moved/ 3 and the new board promptly named that "malignant, black-
spirited rascal/ 74 Judge Strong, to the presidency 75 a total victory for
local Clintonians in a year during which they were riding high through
out the state.

Nevertheless, the original object of the Colonel s efforts almost for
gotten in the heat of the struggle had been won. The bank, despite its
Clintonian managers, was entirely independent of Canandaigua or other
outside control. Indeed, the town had, by 1825, outgrown its old fear
of domination from that quarter, and the new political rivalry between
Clintonian and Bucktail Republicans had taken its place. The struggle
over the bank had assumed a factional aspect as well, but fortunately
by the mid-decade the quickening activity in Rochester pressed other
concerns to the fore. Though the bitter conflict continued to reverberate
through the life of the village, a new spirit of general enthusiasm was
soon called forth by the official opening of the canal.

THE MARKET TOWN ON THE GENESEE

The commercial activity of the village had been increasing at a
steadily accelerating pace for several years. Unable to gauge either the
rate or the extent of the advance, many of the pioneers stumbled and fell
out of step, adding a personal element to the local economic struggle.
"The inhabitants of this village," one resident declared in 1818, "are
half of them no better than bankrupts, & the rest can hardly pay. In
one word, this place is a mushroom." w Unlike an urban scene where a
man blames himself or the system for his reverses, and unlike the
traditional village where all appear to suffer or prosper together in the
grace of God, in Rochester it was a man s neighbor who broke his
contract and was turned out or given a hand, and in either case the
circumstances were remembered. There seemed to be many grievances
to remember as the river, the canal, and the resulting commercial

n CoL Rochester to Douglas, Rochester, Dec. 16, 1824, Rochester Letters.

72 Assembly Journal (1825), pp. 24, 943, 977, 986.

73 Dr. Anson Colman to his wife, Rochester, July 17, 1825, Colman Letters,
Univ. Rochester.

74 Col. Rochester to Douglas, Rochester, July a, 1824, Rochester Letters.
73 Tekgraph, July 19, 1825.

76 Joseph Spencer to Elisabeth Selden, Rochester, July 9, x8i8, E. S. S. Eaton
Letters.

THE BOOM TOWN 83

revolution buffeted the town forward. With limited horizons, few
realized that there would be ample room for them all and for many
more besides in the expanding city soon to emerge.

The village was rapidly outgrowing its frontier days. The newcomer
now seldom invited his neighbors over for a house raising; instead, a
builder was hired or, more probably, a place rented for a year or two
until a firm foothold could be secured. Nevertheless, the friendly
cooperative spirit of pioneer days still appeared on numerous occasions
in the early twenties. Thus, in 1821, when a fire broke out one February
evening in the cooper shop of Benjamin James, the snowbound vil
lagers not only enjoyed their battle against the flames, unsuccessful
though it was, but gathered as for a lark the next day and rebuilt the
shop on an enlarged plan, making it possible for James to employ
twenty-five journeymen coopers for the rest of the winter. 77

No doubt the camaraderie was most evident after a heavy snowfall
when the sleigh bells jingled 7S and great logs blazed in the fireplaces
of the scattered homes and public houses. The seasons and the elements
still played vital roles in the life of Rochester. Not only did the snow
drifts of one season and the miry bogs of the next directly affect the
general welfare, but the power-giving Genesee remained a treacherous
benefactor which might at any moment snatch back the wealth and in
fluence it had bestowed. For years the river presented a constant
hazard, particularly to the millers, whose dependence on its energy
placed them within easy reach of its fury. 79 The bridge at Rochester
was frequently threatened and occasionally damaged, 80 though it never
suffered the fate of the successive bridges at Avon and Carthage. 81

No other local catastrophe during the decade quite equalled the fall
of the great bridge at Carthage. The hopes and fortunes of the pro
moters of that lake port had to a considerable extent been tied to the
bold project of bridging the gorge. Property valued at $15,000 had been
pledged to the state in order to secure an advance of the necessary
building funds. For nine months the workmen labored under the skilled
direction of Ezra Brainard, the architect in charge, until, early in
February, 1819, the structure stood completed. 82 Soaring 718 feet from
bank to bank, 190 feet above the water, with the chord of its single

i 1 Rochester Gazette, Feb. 13, 1821.

78 Rochester Gazette) Nov. 14, 1820.

79 William Fitzhugh to Col. Rochester, Hampton, Apr. 9, 12, 1823, Rochester
Letters.

^Dorothy S. Truesdale, "Historic Main Street Bridge," Rochester History
(April, 1941).

81 New York Laws of 1803, ch. 89 ; Laws of 1806, ch. 172 ; Laws of 1807, ch. 99 ;
Laws of 1817 1 ch. 104; Laws of 1821, ch. 247.

82 Telegraph, Oct. 27, 1818, Jan. 12, 1819; Ontario Repository, Dec. 16, 1817;
Feb. 2, 1819.

84 THE WATER-POWER CITY

arch measuring 352 feet, the Carthage bridge surpassed all rivals in
its day, 63 and many curious travelers came to view the marvel. 84 For
fifteen months creaking stages and heavily loaded wagons jolted safely
across, though not without sending shivers up and down the spines of
their passengers. The bridge withstood the ravages of two winters, but
finally, almost without warning, its Gothic arch gave way under the
pressure of the heavy framework, and the timbers tumbled apart into
the gorge. 85

The crashing bridge carried down with it the visionary plans for
the village of Carthage. 86 Foreclosure of their properties by the state
was postponed on the agreement of the proprietors to build a second
bridge. 87 But the new structure proved much less pretentious, while its
difficult approaches, which required travelers to descend to the flats
above the second falls, restricted its use. Washed out by the spring
flood of 1827, it was scarcely missed even by the remaining settlers in
that vicinity. 85 Moreover, the possibility that the canal would be
diverted to a terminus at Oswego, which would have been a boon to all
Ontario ports, finally disappeared in 1821, when contracts were signed
for work on the western district of the Erie. A briefly considered plan
to extend a branch of the canal from the east end of the aqueduct north
to the Carthage landing did not materialize, 89 though an inclined plane
was constructed to facilitate the transport of goods and passengers up
the steep bank from the dock. 90 Many of the more energetic settlers
had quickly removed, some of them to Rochester, and the hamlet, re
named Clyde, 91 contented itself with the trade it was able to secure as
one of the lake ports for the growing town at the upper falls.

^Herman Haupt, General Theory of Bridge Construction (New York, 1861),
pp. 144-146. This interesting study describes the famous Schaffhausen bridge of
Switzerland, with which the Carthage bridge was frequently compared, but which
had been destroyed in 1799. O Reilly, Sketches of Rochester, p. 385.

84 "Letter from an American Traveler/ Telegraph, Aug. 17, 1819; [Frances
Wright], Views of Society and Manners in America, pp. 163-164; "General
Brown s Inspection Tour of the Lakes," Buffalo Hist. Soc., Pub., XXIV, 299-300.

85 Directory of the Village of Rochester (1827), pp. 133-134.

^"Memorial to the President & Directors of the Bank of U. S. for a Branch
at the Village of Carthage," Mar. 4, 1818, L. H. Clarke to Joshua Stow, Carthage,
Mar. 17, 1818, R. H. S., Pub., II, 222-232.

87 "Petition for Remission of Loan of $10,000," from Elisha Strong and L. H.
Clarke, MS, Roch. Hist. Soc.; Senate Journal (1820), pp. 183-184; Letters to
Henry O Reilly, Sept. 16, Nov. 12, 1834, O Reilly Doc., Roch. Hist. Soc., relate to
his appointment in 1834 as state agent for the disposal of the remaining prop
erties under this old bond.

88 Rochester Observer, Apr. 14, 1827.

89 Laws of the State of New York in Relation to the Erie and Champlain Canals,
I, 511-512.

"Journal of a Trip to Niagara in 1822," MS, Univ. Rochester.
n Telegraph, June 22, 1819.

THE BOOM TOWN 85

The fall rains and spring thaw up the valley provided annual threats, 92
but for many years no flood brought such damage to the village as that
of 1817. It was not so much the actual property destroyed as the injury
to the morale of the community that made this flood significant. The
fact that Elisha Johnson, by raising the dam above the height of
previous works of this character, had turned the flood onto the Rochester
lowlands proved a cause of bitterness, 93 only partly allayed when the
location of the court house definitely fixed the hundred-acre tract as
the center for the new town. Meanwhile, Ely, Bissell, and Ely brought a
suit for damages to their mill property against Elisha Johnson as the
builder of the dam. By agreement, the suit was submitted to E. B. Strong
and Ashley Sampson as referees, who recommended a withdrawal and
the institution of a new suit to recover from all the parties concerned
in the dam. The indignation of Rochester, Fitzhugh, and Carroll thus
unexpectedly involved knew no bounds. The jealousies developing in
the struggle over the bank were fanned to a point where the hostile
factions could scarcely communicate with one another. 94 As soon as the
Red Mill lease expired, Rochester offered the property for sale; 95 the
Ely brothers and Bissell promptly transferred most of their enterprises
east of the Genesee. It was not entirely by chance that Clinton Street
was laid out on the east side, for political and economic differences were
increasingly identified with the natural rivalries of the opposite banks
of the river.

Yet dissension failed to check the growing village. The river, bearing
an increasing harvest down from its fruitful valley, likewise supplied
power to process the goods for distant markets. More substantial mills,
several important new industries, many accessory handicrafts, a group
of commodious taverns, and a multitude of merchants quickly trans
formed the falls settlement into the leading market town of western
New York even before the influence of the canal became clearly
apparent.

Despite its occasional fits of temper, the Genesee was Rochester s
oldest and most reliable friend. The valley rapidly filled with enter
prising settlers from the East, whose produce readily followed the water

92 The Genesee drainage basin covers 2446 square miles, more than four times
the area of Monroe County, but only a small part of the county lies in the Genesee
basin.

^William Fitzhugh to Col. Rochester, Hampton, Apr. 8, Sept. 9, 1819; Charles
H. Carroll to Col. Rochester, Williamsburg, Oct., 1819, Rochester Letters.

94 H. Ely to Col. Rochester, Rochester, Nov. 20, 1822; Mar. 12, 1823, Rochester
Letters, Ely apparently failed to receive replies from Carroll and Fitzhugh, while
Ely himself delayed for half a year a reply to Col. Rochester.

95 Telegraph, July 10, 1821.

86 THE WATER-POWER CITY

drainage. 96 Products characteristic of frontier days, such as logs, ashes,
staves, and whiskey, constituted the major exports, 97 but a few pro
gressive farmers specialized in breeded cattle and sheep, 98 while others
were experimenting with new varieties of wheat in quest of seed adapted
to the area." The stimulus of high prices over a period of years after
1813 joined with the succession of favorable growing seasons, beginning
with 1819, to produce increasingly abundant crops. 100

The river quickly developed a colorful commercial life. Docks ap
peared at favorable points, and among other boats the Shove-a-head
made regular weekly round trips for several months in 1820. Heavy
loads of staves, ashes, corn, and whiskey floated down to Rochester,
while lighter loads of merchandise were poled slowly back to Geneseo. 101
In 1822 it was estimated that "more than 10,000 bbl. of flour with
large quantities of pork and potash and many other articles of country
produce were carried down that river to ... the largest market town
in the state west of the capital." 102

The proportions of this trade emerged most strikingly in the export
statistics of the Genesee Port. Despite adverse circumstances the volume
of these shipments increased steadily down to the mid-twenties. The
flour export jumped from 20,000 barrels in 1 8 18 to 67,467 in 1820, when
it represented 55 per cent of the $375,000 valuation put on the exports
of that year. 103 An average of fifteen schooners and two steamboats
called each week during the busy season, while the collector reported
a total of 316 visits in 182 o. 104 Local as well as Oswego and Canadian
forwarding companies delivered the produce to distant markets and
filled Genesee orders for foreign merchandise. 109 Several small schooners

96 H. G. Spafford, Gazetteer of the State of New York (1824), pp. 287, 326. By
1821 Livingston and Monroe counties together boasted of 157,000 acres of improved
farm land.

9T U. R. Hedrick, A History of Agriculture in the United States (Albany, 1933),
pp. 134-164.

98 L. W. Hopkins to Col. Rochester, Geneseo, Oct. 12, 1812, Rochester Letters;
Wheatland Agricultural Society, Record Book (1822-1827), MS, Roch. Hist. Soc.
The first funds raised by this society in 1822 went to the purchase of a bull for
use on the members farms.

99 Rawson Harmon, Jr., "The Several Varieties of Wheat and Their Respective
Value," N. Y. State Agricultural Society, Transactions for 1841 (Albany, 1842),
II, 254-256.

100 William Garbutt in N. Y. State Agricultural Society, Transactions for 1844
(Albany, 1845), IV, 99-101, Elizabeth Turner, "The Settlement of Western New
York," MS, M.A. Thesis, Univ. Rochester (1934), pp. 102-104.

101 Gazette, June 13, 1820.

102 Senate Journal (1823), pp. 81-82.

103 Assembly Journal (1820), pp. 925-927.

IQ4> Gazette, June 13, July 15, Oct. 10, 1820. Marine lists were printed each
week in this and other local papers. Telegraph, Jan. 16, 1821.
105 Monr oe Republican, June 21, 1821.

THE BOOM TOWN 87

were built in the Genesee during the decade, chiefly by the Rogers
brothers, whose activities at Carthage helped to make that port the
favored Genesee landing. 106

Rochester, becoming more conscious of its character as a trading and
export town, sent petitions to Albany and Washington, urging the im
provement of the channel and the erection of a lighthouse at the mouth
of the river. 107 News of impending tariff restraints on trade with Britain
brought an immediate remonstrance from Colonel Rochester, who de
clared that such a measure would do "great injury to the 300,000 settlers
of the Genesee Country," many of whose land titles depended upon
their ability to make annual payments and whose only commercial out
let was through Montreal. 103

That the St. Lawrence was not a safe trade outlet for Rochester soon
became evident, yet for a time a profitable commerce was enjoyed.
Although satisfactory improvements of the harbor were delayed until
the close of the decade, 109 a lighthouse appeared on the west bank in
i822. 110 The flour exports mounted to 130,000 barrels by i823, m but
declining prices, occasioned in part by a flooding of the Montreal market
with both Canadian and American produce, were already reducing
Rochester s trade balance. The Canada Trade Act of 1822, restricting
the participation of American boats in such commerce, served an addi
tional warning. Canadian shippers could still carry Genesee food products
to Montreal free of duty, and the exports of lumber and potash in
American bottoms continued to mount, but gloom would have settled
over the village had not the rapid progress on the canal promised a
remedy. 112

Rochester was a mill town by birthright, however, and the upsurge
of its economic activity definitely preceded the arrival of the canal.
Already in 1821 the village contained four flour mills and seven saw
mills, while seventeen others operated in the near vicinity. Logs com
prised the chief raw material, processed in part by eight asheries near the
village and forty-four in the county. 113 Most of the rural settlers im
proved the long winter months by cutting staves for the Rochester

106 George H. Harris, "Early Shipping on the Lower Genesee River: Reminis
cences of Captain Hosea Rogers," R. H. S., Pub., IX, 101-105.

107 Assembly Journal (1820), pp. 925-927; Jesse Hawley to Col. Rochester,
Canandaigua, Aug. 2, 1817, Rochester Letters.

108 Col. Rochester to Henry Clay, Rochester, Apr. 8, 1820, photostat letter at
Univ. Rochester.

109 Telegraph, Mar. 25, 1823; Anti-Masonic Enquirer, May 18, 1830; Rochester
Republican, July 5, 1830.

110 Telegraph, Feb. 13, 1821, Feb. 5, 1822; Rochester Directory (1827), p. 135.

111 Spafford, Gazetteer (1824), pp. 190-191.

112 D. G. Creighton, The Commercial Empire of the St. Lawrence: 1760-1850
(Toronto, 1937), pp. 190-193, 234-240; New York Senate Journal (1823), p. 397.
1X3 Telegraph, Sept. 4, 1821, Jan. 3, 1822.

88 THE WATER-POWER CITY

coopers to assemble into barrels for the millers and distillers, who
shared the task of preparing the increased supply of grain for market. 114
Bark and hides from up the valley kept a local tannery busy and sup
plied raw material for the saddlers and shoemakers whose products were
in demand on the expanding frontier. 115 A paper mill as well as a woolen
and a cotton factory operated on a small scale; several triphammer
shops and blacksmith forges, dignified as iron foundries, produced and
repaired the necessary metal tools. 116 "Slightly exaggerated" reports of
rich coal and iron deposits along the Genesee further stimulated local
optimists. UT

Enterprising Yankees filled the streets about the bridge with shops
of varied pretensions. Upwards of fifty "general merchandizing establish
ments" advertised their arrival before 1825, though many quickly dis
appeared. 118 More permanent stores specialized in books, hats, shoes,
fish, hardware, and drugs, 119 but next to the general store in popularity
stood the humble but hospitable grocery. 120 Hamlet Scrantom, again
tiring of the arduous labors of milling, re-opened such an establishment
in 1821. The entries in his cash book reveal that the villagers dropped
in occasionally for potatoes, apples, candles, crackers, and cheese, or
possibly eggs, salt, and bitters; but tobacco, cider, and most of all
whiskey served as the primary attractions. Indeed, seven barrels of the
last article, bought wholesale at 25 cents a gallon, kept Scrantom in
stock for several months, enabling him to fill his grocery shelves with
the barter traded in by his various customers. One artisan called with
eight pairs of shoes to settle his account, and within a month Scrantom
had disposed of them at $1.50 a pair. Ice cream and soda water were
added to his line in i823, 121 possibly in an effort to meet the ingenuity
of some close rival among his forty-odd merchant competitors, whose
versatility kept the commercial life of the village in constant flux. 122

114 Telegraph, July 4, 27, Sept. 5, 1820; Jan. 3, Dec. 31, 1822; "E. Pomeroy s
Report on Rochesterville s flour product," Dec. n, 1819, Rochester Letters.

115 Telegraph, Mar, 7, 1820; June 5, 26, Aug. 7, Nov. 6, 1821; "Asa Weston s
Contract to build a Tannery for Colonel Rochester," Aug. 17, 1818, Rochester
Letters.

116 Telegraph, Feb. 2, 16, 1819; May 30, 1820; Feb. 19, 1822; Feb. 25, Apr. 15,
"1823; May 25, June 27, 1824; Assembly Journal (1823), pp. 734-735; Colonel
Rochester to A. Douglas, Rochester, Dec. 16, 1824, Rochester Letters.

117 Telegraph, July 23, 30, 1822; Hibernicus [DeWitt Clinton], Letters on the
Natural History and Internal Resources of the State of New York (New York,
1822), pp. 37, 99^102.

118 Newspaper Index, Roch, Pub. Library.

119 Telegraph, Oct. 3, 1820; Monroe Republican, Dec. ii, 1821.

120 Telegraph, July 28, 1818, July 17, 1823.

121 H. ScrantonVs Day Book, MS, II, 54-102, Roch. Hist. Soc,; Telegraph,
Oct. 14, ai, 1823; July 27, 1824,

12a Spafford, Gazetteer (1824), pp. 190-191,

THE BOOM TOWN 89

The usual array of skilled artisans filled the village with activity.
In 1820 William Reynolds, the postmaster s oldest boy, opened a
barber shop, the second in the village. 123 It was a good way to keep tabs
on one s rapidly changing neighborhood in which tailors, hatters,
clothiers, and milliners catered to personal needs; tallow chandlers,
bakers, chair- and cabinetmakers supplied necessary household articles;
while wheelwrights, saddlers, and coachmakers served the never-ending
procession of travelers. Every week or so a new advertisement appeared
in the rival papers, a new sign was hung in Buffalo or one of the lesser
streets. 124 Carpenters, brick- and stonemasons, painters, and plasterers
were busy filling the gaps in the settlement, while neat wood and brick
houses, painted white with green Venetian shutters, spread over the
stump-infested environs. 125

The building industry topped all others in activity, just as the promo
tion of town lots excelled as a source of profit. In the twelve months
preceding June, 1823, one church, nine three-story brick buildings, and
a hundred and fifty houses of various dimensions were erected a
25 per cent growth in one year. 126 Still the accommodations proved in
sufficient for the throng of newcomers, though the number forced to
camp in their wagons during the first weeks after their arrival was not
as great as a few years before. 127 Thurlow Weed discovered that no
decent house could be rented short of twelve shillings a week with the
result that the youthful journeyman and his family found shelter with
his hospitable employer, Everard Peck. 128 Fortunately for Weed, Peck s
recently completed brick dwelling on Falls (Spring) Street was one of
the most comfortable in thoi village. 129 The new three-story brick house
erected on that same quiet street in 1823 for Colonel Rochester cost
$850, exclusive of a $600 frame addition later attached. Said to be the
work of a recently arrived architect, Captain Daniel Loomis, the
Rochester house showed a conservative interpretation of the Post
Colonial style popular at the time. 13Q

In greatest demand was the modest two-story frame house of four
rooms built around a central chimney. Colonel Rochester, who put up
several of these, rented them at from eighty to one hundred dollars a

Republican, June 26, 1821.

124 Newspaper Index.

125 Telegraph, July 20, 1819; June 28, 1825; Blake McKelvey, "British Travelers
to the Genesee Country," R. H. S., Pub., XVIII, 30-33.

126 Spafford, Gazetteer, pp. 189-190.

127 Edwin Scrantom, "Old Citizen s Letters," p. 29, Scrapbook, Roch. Hist. Soc.
M8 Addison Gardiner to Thurlow Weed, Rochester, Oct. 8, 1822, Weed Papers;

Weed, Autobiography, p. 97.

129 "The Peck House," R. H. S., Pub., IX, 66.

130 Rochester Letters, Sept. i, 1823; Nov. 13, 1825; Walter H. Cassebeer,
"Architecture in Rochester," R. H. S,, Pub., XI, 288.

90 THE WATER-POWER CITY

year, or granted a half-year lease to an artisan agreeing to paint or
plaster the dwelling. 181 With subdivision taking place on all sides, lots
on the outskirts of the hundred-acre tract, originally priced at twenty-
five dollars a quarter-acre, were now divided into three or four house
lots at two hundred dollars each. Dr. Matthew Brown, Abelard
Reynolds, Charles H. Carroll, son of Rochester s former partner, and
Frederick Hanford engaged in town-lot promotion west of the river,
while Elisha Johnson, Samuel J. Andrews, Ashbel Riley, Josiah Bissell,
and several others were similarly employed on the east side. 132 Colonel
Rochester, having purchased an additional tract south of the one
hundred acres, appraised his remaining town lots in 1825 at $ioo,ooo. 133
The valuation placed on the real estate properties of Gates and Brighton
reached $386,597 and $378,793 respectively in 1824, increasing to $665,-
700 and $598,200 a year later. The two small townships, added together,
considerably exceeded other townships in the state west of Albany,
both in their total valuation and in value per acre. 184

THE CANAL BRINGS A BOOM

The rapid construction of the Erie Canal inevitably quickened the
town s economic activities. The prospect of a new and sure market en
couraged expansion in the milling and commercial fields, while the
state expenditures on the waterway, supplying an abundance of ready
cash, spurred local enterprise. Almost without realizing it, Rochester
had become, if only for a few brief years, the boom town of America. 185

Interest in the canal became more lively as the work progressed. The
opening of the central stretch through Utica in the fall of 1820 dispelled
skepticism concerning its practicability. 186 Work on the great embank
ment, designed to carry the canal over the deep Irondequoit valley,

131 Rochester Letters, Apr. 19, 1819; Apr. 7, July 28, Oct. 16, 1823.

182 Levi Ward Coll. MSS, Roch. Hist. Soc.; Telegraph, May 25, 1824. Most issues
of the local weeklies carried advertisements of lots for sale, ranging, where the
price was mentioned, from sixty to two hundred dollars each.

ias Charles A. Dewey, "Nathaniel Rochester, " R. H. S., Pub*, III, 274; Charles
H. Carroll obituary, Rochester Union and Advertiser, July 24, 1865.

134 Assembly Journal (1825), p. 190; David H. Burr, Atlas of the State of New
York (New York, 1829). The statistics included by Burr are from the 1825 state
census. Seneca township which included the village of Geneva had 24,676 acres
of improved land and was valued at $1,139,032; Utica in New Hartford township
had 19,696 acres of improved land and a real property valuation of $1,030,602;
Canandaigua with 18,208 acres of improved land came next with $746,969 in
re al property; Buffalo township had 5,664 acres of improved land and a valua
tion of $683,847; but Gates, which came next in value, had only 3,108 acres of im
proved land and was one of the smallest townships in area west of Albany. Brighton
had only 7,945 acres improved. Their combined total area was 49,600 acres, less
than many other towns, including Buffalo.

185 Rochester Directory (1827), p. 137.

186 Telegraph, Oct. 3, Nov. 14, 1820.

TEE BOOM TOWN 9*

brought a surge of activity to the area in the summer of 182 1. The letting
of the contract for the Genesee aqueduct that autumn gave Rochester
final assurance of the canal crossing and released the energies of many
who had been awaiting that decision before developing their prop
erties. 137

The construction of the aqueduct was a bold undertaking for the
day, and numerous difficulties were encountered. The first contractor,
William Brittin, fresh from his experiences as builder of the new state
prison at Auburn, brought along some thirty convicts to relieve thje
labor shortage at Rochester. Unfortunately, numerous escapes occurred,
causing great alarm, and the convict camp had to be displaced by free
labor enrolled from newly arrived Irish immigrants. 138 Additional delays
occurred when Britain s death forced the letting of a new contract and
when river ice destroyed the partially completed piers during the
winter. Meanwhile, the sandstone quarried at Carthage proving un
suitable for capping purposes, a more durable stone was brought from
Cayuga, increasing the outlay for the completed aqueduct to $83,000
by September, i823. 189 But already the 8o2-foot massive stone aqueduct,
spanning the river on eleven Roman arches, was attracting favorable
comment from visiting engineers, fully justifying Rochester s pride in
the longest stone bridge yet built in America. 140

-4

Canal traffic became an important factor in the affairs of Rochester
long before the great trade artery officially opened in 1825. A few river
boats passed through the feeder and along the canal to Pittsford after
July, 1822, making an overland connection with vessels on the com
pleted central section several miles further east, but the stretch over
the embankment was not ready until fall. 141 Shipments east started in
considerable volume in the spring of 1823, though it was October before
boats could use the aqueduct to cross to and from the main part of the
village. Rochester joyfully seized the occasion to celebrate the comple
tion of its aqueduct and the beginning of unobstructed water com
munications with Albany and New York. 142 The canal was opened
westward to Brockport early the next spring, 143 and something of the

187 Telegraph, Oct. 15, Nov. 26, Dec. 10, 1822; Monroe Republican, Sept. 4, 1821.

188 Telegraph, July 31, Aug. 7, Sept. 25, Oct. 30, -1821; Assembly Journal (1824),

pp. 517-519-

139 Telegraph, Sept. 9, 1823 ; Laws in Relation to Erie and Champlain Canals,
II, 66, 100-102, 166-167, 567-568; Assembly Journal (1824), pp. 5*5-5i9 981-984.

140 A. Duttenhofer, A Study-Journey through the United States (Stuttgart, 1835),
R. W. G. Vail, tr., quoted in R. H. S., Pub., XI, 358; XVIII, 92.

141 Telegraph, Oct. 2, Nov. 13, 1821; Oct. 15, 1822; Laws in Relation to Erie
and Champlain Canals, II, 102.

^Monroe Republican, Oct. 7, 1823; Telegraph, Oct. ax, Nov. n, 1823.
143 Telegraph, Apr. 27, 1824.

92 THE WATER-POWER CITY

character of its early trade appeared in the Monroe Republican s weekly
report of November 4th:

Arrived since our last: 75 tons Merchandize, 9 do. Castings and Furniture,
226 bu. Grain, 1572 Bbls. Salt; 288 bbls. Flour, 15 Ashes, 18 Oil from Brock-
port, 1 6 Cords of Bark, and many passengers.

Cleared same time 56 Boats with: 2000 bbls. Flour, 219 bbls Ashes 92
Salt 1 8 Pork, 42 Oil 51 Tons Merchandize, 9000 feet lumber and many
passengers.

Rochester s preparations for the canal trade centered around the
construction of a series of slips or basins for dockage purposes. On the
east side, Gilbert s and Johnson s Basins already facilitated the load
ing of boats at the mills along Johnson s race. Across the river, a half-
dozen basins eventually reached into the millyards near the raceway
and into potential commercial centers a few blocks further west, thus
extending the area of business activity in a broad band through the
northern part of the hundred-acre tract and the western section of
Frankfort. 144 Child s Basin at the west end of the aqueduct, extending
to the north between present Exchange and Aqueduct Streets, quickly
became the most active dock in town, making it necessary to limit the
time a boat could tie up at one of the adjoining mills or warehouses. 145

Shipments over the canal began to mount soon after the route was
opened to Albany. The first ten days of traffic in 1823 saw 10,540
barrels of flour loaded at Rochester, 146 and year after year the opening
weeks in March or April presented a scene of intense activity. Transport
costs to Albany dropped from the $60 or $100 per ton charges for the
wagon haul, to a maximum of $10 a ton by boat, thus enabling the
canal to capture the old freighting business and part of the lake trade
with Canada, as well as stimulating the shipment of goods formerly con
sidered unmarketable. 147 Rough totals for the shipments from Rochester
in 1823 and 1826 chart the rapid growth of the local canal trade: 64,000
barrels of flour rising to 202,000; 1,200 barrels of pork to 7,000; and
52,900 gallons of whiskey to i35,ooo. 148

By the late twenties, when the early canal traffic ran at full flood, an
average of around thirty-five boats drew up daily at local docks. 149 In

144 Rochester Directory (1827), p. 122; Edward R. Foreman, "Canal Basins in
Rochester," R. H. S., Pub., XI, 367-368,

145 "Child s Basin Rules and Regulations," MS, Roch. Hist. Soc.

146 Telegraph, Mar. 6, 1823.

i-tr ii V. Poor, The Influence of Railroads in the Creation of Commerce (New
York, 1869) ; see also Percy W. Bidwell and J. I. Falconer, History of Agriculture
in the Northern United States (2nd ed., New York, 1941), pp. 180-183,

148 Rochester Directory (1827), p. 115.

149 Whitney R. Cross, "Creating a Citj: The History of Rochester from 1824 to
1834," M.A. Thesis at Univ. Rochester, 1936, pp. 60-61. Several of the local papers
gave daily lists of the arrivals and departures of canal boats as well as lake craft.

THE BOOM TOWN 93

1827 the shipments east from Rochester reached a total value of $1,200,-
ooo, two-thirds of it in flour, and merchandise valued at $1,020,800 was
brought back from Eastern ports to fill the shelves of Rochester stores. 150
The village enjoyed a full and overflowing share of the canal s ad
vantages. For several years the tolls gathered by the local collector ex
ceeded the collections at any two other ports, excluding Albany, and
sometimes equalled those levied at the capital on all westbound traffic. 151

The canal gave an immediate spur to Genesee River trade. 152 The
feeder provided a convenient link between the two water routes, and
for several years after 1825 chiefly served this purpose. The rapids
south of the village still presented an obstruction to boats during the dry
season, and a concerted drive by river interests failed to persuade the
legislature to authorize the dredging of a channel through the rift. 153
Nevertheless, the river trade developed to such a point that a shallow-
bottomed steamboat was constructed in 1824 for passenger service,
though it proved more useful for tugging barges. 154 By 1827, about five
million feet of sawed lumber came down the river annually, in addition
to the logs floated down in great cribs to make possible nearly double
that output from the sawmills of Rochester. 155 At one time more than
forty such cribs were tied up above the Johnson dam waiting for high
water to flood them over the dam to the lumber yards below. 156

The commercial opportunities afforded by the canal called for new
tributary highways. Advocates of state roads fanning out from Rochester
petitioned the legislature in 1823 and succeeding years. As the power
to tax unsettled land adjacent to the roads was sought without success, 157
the most practicable methods of connecting an isolated territory with
the growing market town proved to be the formation of turnpike com
panies. Accordingly, the Rochester and Portage Turnpike Company, 158

150 Rochester in 1827 (Rochester, 1828), p. 139.

151 Senate Documents (1827), No. i66E. Rochester s tolls collected in 1826
$85,779.17, when Albany took in $120,335, and Buffalo only $19,558- Buffalo did
not exceed Rochester until 1838, when Buffalo s tolls reached $202,890 to Rochester s
$195453. Senate Doc. (1839) > No. 27.

152 R. Grant, "York Landing," Livingston Co. Hist. Soc., Proceedings (1891),
pp. 45-So.

158 Senate Journal (1823), pp. 25, 81-82, 232-233, 580; Assembly Journal (1823),
pp. 514, 644; Assembly Journal (1824), pp. 947, 999, 1029, 1181; Assembly
Journal (1825), pp. 422, 444, 474.

^Livingston Journal, July 28, 1824; Edward R. Foreman, "Shipping on the
Upper Genesee," R. H. S., Pub., IX, 304-308.

155 Rochester in 1827, p. 139.

156 E. P. Clapp, "The Travel, Trade and Transportation of the Pioneer," p. 119,
MS of 1907, Roch. Hist. Soc.

157 Assembly Journal (1823), pp. 602, 682; Assembly Journal (1824), pp. 36,
87, 641; Assembly Journal (1825), p. 633.

158 Senate Journal (1825), pp. 336, 351-352; Assembly Journal (1825), pp. 844,
1142.

94 THE WATER-POWER CITY

the Rome and Rochester Turnpike Company, 159 and the Rochester to
Lockport Road Company were chartered and funds gathered for their
construction. 160

Frequent travel over the network of highways that now surrounded
Rochester kept them in fair shape except during the muddy season. By
the summer of 1822 a daily stage wagon rattled back and forth between
Canandaigua and Rochester carrying as many as ten passengers in
addition to the mail bags, 161 and though less frequent stages followed
the other roads, the taverns at the falls prospered. By 1826 two daily
stages left Rochester for Albany by the rival Canandaigua and Palmyra
routes, a daily stage left for Lewiston by the Ridge Road, another for
Buffalo by way of Scottsville and Batavia, a second to Batavia by way
of Chili and Bergen, and still another through Henrietta and Avon to
Geneseo. 162 With fares of $ l /2 cents a mile, these companies did a thriv
ing business, despite the competition of twelve packet boats on the
canal (charging only iy 2 cents a mile), for the six or eight miles per
hour covered by the stages compared favorably with the three and four
miles of the packets. 168 "At a moderate calculation," one editor esti
mated, "there depart daily the round number of 130 persons from this
village" he did not venture to guess the number of arrivals. 164

<

Economic activities within the village assumed new proportions in
the mid-twenties. Though capital from the East became increasingly
available, local enterprise retained control. The building trades boomed,
real estate values soared, and milling ventures appeared in numbers
that prompted the first effort to conserve water power.

Two closely related major industries created by the new trade artery
were the boatyards, which quickly appeared along the canal at the
eastern and western limits of the town, and the local forwarding com
panies, which soon dominated the carrying trade. The abundant lumber
supply, including pine from the highlands around the southern edges of
the Genesee Valley, made Rochester the favored boatbuilding center
for the Erie. The many individual boatbuilders of the early twenties gave
place by the end of the decade to six well-organized boatyards where
standardized packet and freight boats, worth from $800 to $1200 each,
were turned out by the score every year. 165

In like fashion individual boatmen were quickly displaced by the

159 Senate Journal (1825), pp. 633, 840, 907, 1180.

100 Senate Journal (1825), pp. 496, 947; Senate Journal (1827), pp. 613, 687, 703.
161 Jed Baldwin to his daughter, Pittsford, Oct. 9, 1822, MS, Roch. Hist. Soc.
162 Rochester Directory (1827), pp. 131-132.

163 Directory, p. 131 ; Cross, "Creating a City," p. 65.

164 Rochester Album, May 16, 1826.

^Rochester Daily Advertiser & Telegraph, Sept. 19, 1829,

THE BOOM TOWN 93

more efficient boat companies. Freight and packet lines made regular
calls at the various canal ports where their agents collected shipments
for prompt dispatch. 166 By 1827, the Pilot Line, owned by Jonathan
Child, scheduled 34 freight boats drawn by 180 horses with regular
stops between New York and Detroit. Five other companies active on
the canal at that time were owned principally by Rochester men, raising
to 1 60 the total number of boats operating out of Rochester. In the
spring and fall the usual charge was one dollar a barrel for carrying
Rochester flour to Albany, but rates frequently fell off during summer
months when competition for freight became sharp. 167

An obvious classification of local industries would distinguish those
engaged in processing the products of the valley for export abroad from
those which converted an easily imported material into articles for sale
on the frontier. Most industries of the first variety were established be
fore the canal opened a more reliable market, greatly increasing their
importance. Chief among these in 1827 were the seven flouring and
nine lumber mills, the two distilleries, and numerous asheries, with such
accessory shops as the fourteen coopers among others provided. 168 The
size and equipment of two new mills, completed the next year, attracted
wide attention and promised to establish a reputation for Rochester
flour. 169

Shops belonging to the second industrial category had likewise ar
rived prior to the canal, but with improved facilities for importing
bulky raw material these establishments began to resemble small fac
tories. More than a score of ironworking shops were noted by the first
Directory, at least two of considerable size. An iron foundry on Brown s
Race turned out millstones, ploughs, and castings of various sorts, 170
while a nail factory was already equipped to cut out its product "by
machine as in Birmingham." 171 Scythes, axes, and guns were among
other articles produced for sale up the valley and on the expanding
frontier. The defunct cotton factory, reestablished and equipped with
30 new power looms and 1400 spindles, gave employment and "the
advantages of a school five evenings a week" to f eighty children in an
attempt to supply the active local market for shirtings, sheets, and other
cotton goods. 172

Several industries likewise developed to convert valley products into

166 Telegraph, Dec. 10, 1822 ; Sept. 14, 1824.

167 Rochester Directory ( 1827), pp. 116-117.

ie8 Directory (1827), pp. 118-119; see above, pp. 87-90.

169 Directory (1827), pp. 117-118; W. B. Knox to Lemuel C. Paine, Rochester,
Aug. 3, 1829, MS, Autograph Letters, Roch. Hist. Soc.

170 Cross, "Creating a City," p. 83.

171 Duke of Saxe-Weimar, Travels through North America (Philadelphia, 1828),
I, 170-172 ; Telegraph, Apr. 6, 1824.

172 Monroe RepubUcan, Dec. 13, 1825; Directory (1827), pp. 114, 115, 118, 120.

9 6 THE WATER-POWER CITY

articles for the local market. Such were two small woolen mills which
bought from Genesee sheep growers and sold to Rochester tailors, and
the oil mill which pressed the seed of neighboring flax fields. Brickyards
turned out 8,000,000 bricks in 1828; one pail factory annually manu
factured 25,000 wooden buckets; a window-sash factory, operated by
water power, and a lengthy ropewalk were notable additions; while
three tanneries contributed a valuable if slightly odoriferous ac
tivity. 173

It was, however, the commercial rather than the industrial revolution
that was transforming Rochester, although the enterprise of numerous
merchant craftsmen gave promise of again changing the village, like
Pittsburgh and Cincinnati before it, 174 into one of the new manufacturing
centers of the West. Meanwhile, probably no more than four or five
of the 134 "manufactories" listed in the first Directory employed over
a half-dozen journeymen or other workers, and apparently only forty
or so used the hydraulic power of which the villagers boasted. Most of
the 423 laborers listed in the Directory were unskilled workmen com
mon to any community. The flour and lumber mills gave direct employ
ment to less than one hundred men, 175 The importance of these major
industries lay in the fact that the commercial revolution, by opening a
vast market for their products, provided Rochester with a favorable
trade balance which greatly strengthened its financial position. The
town at the same time became a favorite market place for farmers and
tradesmen up the valley and for a time throughout the expanding
Northwest as well. 176

By the mid-twenties Rochester boasted "five extensive and excellent
hotels, each . . . capable of accommodating between fifty and seventy
persons," reported an English traveler who could not find, an empty
bed in the place. After an uneasy night on a sofa, he breakfasted at the
Mansion House on "a variety of meats, pies, cakes, tarts, etc. ... in
company with about 100 persons of fashionable appearance and genteel
address." 177 No less impressive were the Ensworth Tavern at the Four
Corners/ 78 the "Coffee House" or Merchants Tavern on Exchange

m Directory (1827), pp. 119-120; Monroe Republican, Dec. 13, 1825; E. R.
Foreman, "Rochester Ropemakers," R. H. S., Pub., VIII, 299-301 ; L. D. Baldwin,
Pittsburgh: The Story of a City (Pittsburgh, 1937), pp. 145-153.

174 Baldwin, Pittsburgh, pp. 218-230.

175 Directory (1827), pp. 114-115, 119-^120. A rough idea of the numbers em
ployed in the various shops may be secured by comparing the number listed un
der the different occupations with the number of such establishments: 3 tanneries
and 29 tanners; 7 mills and 20 millers; 6 printing offices and 31 printers, etc.

176 R. H. S., Pub., IV, 242.

177 E. A. Talbot, Five Years Residence in the Canadas, including a Tour through
Part of the United States of America (London, 1824), pp. 337-338; Telegraph,
Nov. 3, 1818; May 25, 1824.

178 Powers Commercial Fire Proof Building: A Directory (Rochester, 1871), p. 5.

THE BOOM TOWN 97

Street overlooking the canal, 179 the McCracken Tavern in Frankfort, 180
and the Farmers or Brighton Hotel east of the river on Main Street 181
Less pretentious hostelries accommodated country folk, while ambitious
plans for three magnificent new hotels were already projected. The
United States Hotel on Buffalo Street, the Rochester House on Exchange
Street, south of the canal, and the Eagle Hotel on the site of Ensworth s
Tavern at the Four Corners promised new standards of elegant com
fort. 182

But the four-and-one-half story Arcade, erected by Abelard Reynolds
in 1828, was the pride of the town, fully balancing the large Globe
Building erected by Elisha Johnson at the other end of the bridge only
the year before. 183 As Postmaster Reynolds secured most of the neces
sary capital from Albany and New York City, giving mortgages on the
Arcade and other property as security, his backers were naturally con
cerned that the $30,000 building should be adequately insured and that
the 7 per cent interest payments should be made promptly. 184 Although
skeptics expressed fear that Rochester had outdone itself, the store
fronts not required for the post office were soon occupied, while the hotel
and office rooms above proved much in demand. If any witness doubted
the town s growing consequence, he could do nothing better than visit
the Arcade, mount its successive stairs to the turret over the roof, and
there enjoy a pleasant view of the thriving settlement. 185

New uses for local property boosted land values and stimulated a
greater concern for insurance. When the newly appointed street com
missioner took a census of houses late in 1827, he found a total of i,474,
of which 352 had been built that season. 186 Agents of Eastern companies
had written numerous fire policies before 1825, when the first local
company was chartered, 187 but the chief insurance in the early days had

179 George B. Sage, "An Important Historic Place in Rochester, -1825," MS,
Roch. Hist. Soc.; The Northern Traveller: Containing the Route to Niagara,
Quebec, etc. (New York, 1826), pp. 75-79-

180 Edward R. Foreman, "The Old North American Hotel," R. IJ. S., Pub.,

VI, 343-345-

181 Telegraph, Aug. 8, 1820, May 25, 1824; Samson s Scrapbook, No. 52, p. 10.
1S2 Scrantom, "Old Citizen s Letters," pp. 55~57J Rochester in 1827, pp. 142,

149; Jesse W. Hatch, "Memories of Village Days," R. H. S., Pub., IV, 236-244.
18 Rochester in 1827, p. 142.

184 Reynolds Papers, 1826 to 1834, Nos. 178, 184, 187, 1Q4 2 8, 210, 214, Roch.
Hist. Soc.

185 Henry Ibbotson, "A Journey from New York to Buffalo, 1829," MS,
Courtesy of Joseph D. Ibbotson, Winter Park, Florida ; G. M. Davidson, Traveller s
Guide Through the Middle and Northern States (Saratoga Springs, 1837)5 P- 250;
see below, p. 203.

188 Rochester in 1827, pp. 138-139. Some doubt is thrown on these figures by the
enumeration of only 1300 non-public houses in 1834.

187 Assembly Journal (1825), pp. 25, 8p, 225, 493? ?2? 537> 54 1 S 6 7> 74
740-741,

98 THE WATER-POWER CITY

been the green lumber out of which most of the houses were built. 188
However, with a few lots reaching the giddy value of $151 a front foot, 189
and with real property soaring above $i ? ooo ; ooo in total valuation and
paying a rent of $97,000 in 1827, fire insurance became a recognized
part of the annual budget. 190 Indeed, by that date active agencies of eight
insurance companies had located in the growing town. 191

The desire for additional capital continued unabated. The resources
of the Bank of Rochester were in such constant demand that interest
on its stock advanced from 9 to n per cent in 1828. lfl2 Repeated re
quests for a second bank besieged Albany, 198 while Colonel Rochester
turned again to the United States Bank at Philadelphia to secure, if
possible, a branch for the village. 194 Though a second banking institution
was not provided until 1829, much Eastern capital ventured into the
community, as in the case of the Reynolds Arcade, when the enterprise
of a local merchant or an association of partners assumed the initiative.
In 1827, however, when a group of Boston capitalists offered to invest
fifty thousand dollars in a cotton factory 195 under circumstances which
might have led to the absentee proprietorship then developing Lowell, 198
Rochester s leaders gave no encouragement, and nothing came of the
plan.

When Rochester took stock of its assets in the first Directory of
1827, a feeling of independence and self-confidence resulted from the
valuation placed on the Genesee s "hydraulic resources." Estimating the
water flow as twenty thousand cubic feet per minute in dry seasons, and
multiplying by the 28o-foot fall, the author calculated that Rochester
had 12,875 horsepower constantly at hand, equal to $9,718,270 in
hydraulic energy each year. 197 Though only a small portion of this
natural resource was tapped at the time, 196 steps to safeguard it from
injury were being considered. The diversion of Genesee water into the
canal between 1822 and 1826 considerably depleted the power available

188 "Ashley Samson s Reminiscences," in Rochester Daily Union, Mar. 29, 31,
Apr. 5, 7, ii, 13, 1855-

w *Nile$ Register, Apr. 28, 1827, p. 160.

1&0 Assembly Journal (1827), pp. 687, 725, 918.

191 Rochester in 1827, pp. 138, X48- J X49.

192 Tekgraph, Nov. 17, 1828.

198 Album, Mar. 21, 1826; Oct. 16, 1827; Feb. 5, Mar. 11, 1828; Tekgraph, Nov.
10, 17, 1828.
* 1M R. M. Patterson to Col. Rochester, Jan. 14, 1827, Rochester Letters.

195 Rochester in 1827, p. 141.

196 M. T. Parker, Lowell: A Study of Industrial Development (New York,
1940), pp. 59-79; Constance M. Green, Holyoke, Massachusetts: A Case History
of the Industrial Revolution in America (New Haven, 1939), pp. 18-66.

197 Rochester in 1827, p. 140.

198 Samson Scrapbook No. 51, p. 9. In 1828 a total of 3400 horsepower was re
ported available at the four races at the upper and main falls. Cf. Chapter I, note 38.

TEE BOOM TOWN 99

during the dry summer months, but a concerted protest from local
millers prompted the Canal Board to make restitution. 199 With the
arrival of Lake Erie water through the canal from the west, Rochester s
hydraulic advantages from the tumbling waters of the Genesee seemed
assured. 200

AMERICA S FIRST BOOM TOWN

It was from another stream tumbling through Rochester in these years
that the village derived its greatest advantage the stream of westward-
migrating Americans. The Erie channelled the main current of New
York-New Englanders through the market town at the falls. 201 A suf
ficient number of these migrants stopped over long enough to give
Rochester the bustling atmosphere that characterized later boom towns.
An almost reckless optimism held sway. The skeptical or disillusioned
were quickly bought out and enabled to resume their march westward.
The constant danger that this vital energy might flow beyond, leaving
the town stranded in its wake, prompted the publication of a consider
able quantity of literature in the settlement s behalf. Yet so plentiful
and unceasing was the flood of newcomers during the twenties that the
problem aroused little concern.

Rochesterians were confident enough from the start, but in the mid-
twenties they began to see the future of their town through rose-colored
glasses. Outgrowing its earlier rivalry with Canandaigua and Utica,
Rochester sought comparison with Albany and Troy in the East and
with Pittsburgh and Cincinnati in the interior. 202 Moderate men admitted
it was impossible to predict what a single decade would bring, 203 but
for a brief season Rochester appeared to be "a place of enchantment,
and [you] can scarcely believe your own senses, that all should have

199 Telegraph, Nov. 16, 1824; July 5, 1825; Assembly Journal (1824), p. 658;
Assembly Journal (1825), pp. 393-395, 541, 646; Memorial of the Owners of
Water of the Genesee River at Rochester, January, 1853 (Rochester, 1853), pp.
13-14. Hervey Ely received $1500 damages from the state in 1826, whether for his
own or for the losses of all complainants is not clear.
, * Album, Nov. 10, 1825.

201 In earlier days this migration had followed two main routes: westward over
the old State Road through Canandaigua, Avon, Batavia, etc., and southwest by
way of Olean and the Ohio. S. R. Brown, The Western Gazetteer or Emigrant s
Directory (Auburn, 1817), had urged that provisions be secured at Auburn for the
southern route; but by 1825 Olean s days as an emigrant dispatch port were over,
according to Chester A. Loomis, A Journey on Horseback through the Great West
(Bath, n.d.).

202 A. T. Goodrich, The Northern Traveler (New York, 1826), pp. 74-78; Al
bum, May 16, 1826. "If the country adjacent continues to improve as fast as it has
done for ten years past, by the year 1835 Rochester will have outstripped Albany."
That goal was not achieved, however, until the seventies.

208 Joseph H. Nichols, "Diary," MS, Aug. 21, 1825, copy in Samson Note Book,
XI, 96, Roch. Hist. Soc.

too THE WATER-POWER CITY

been the work of so short a period," observed Justice Story in
while Mrs. Basil Hall described it in 1827 as "the best place we have
yet seen for giving strangers an idea of the newness of this coun
try." 205

This surging growth continued throughout the first ten years of the
settlement s villagehood. The 1049 inhabitants of 1818 became by local
count 9489 at the opening of i828. 206 Though the advance proved less
striking in the decade of the twenties, even the 512 per cent increase of
that period (contrasting with 804 per cent for 1818-1828) exceeded the
rate of growth of all other communities measured over the full decade. 207
Buffalo was Rochester s closest rival, gaining 313 per cent during the
twenties, but Lowell, which sprang practically from zero in 1822 to
6474 by 1830, emerged as the unrivalled boom town of the 1825-1835
period, only to be surpassed in turn by Mobile in the decade of the
thirties. 208 Never before had incorporated villages mushroomed at such
rates. 209

Pride in this remarkafcle growth early gained expression in the local
press. The letter of an American traveler, who wrote from Pittsburgh
to the New York Evening Post in 1819 after an extended jaunt through
the West, was republished locally:

As much as has been said about the sudden growth of the towns west of
the Allegany, yet nothing I have heard of or seen in the valley of the Missis
sippi can boast of so rapid growth as the village of Rochester favored by
nature in its location with beauty and grandeur in the cataracts of the
Genesee. , . . I shall venture to say that when the neighboring wood is cut

204 William W. Story, ed., The Life and Letters of Joseph Story (Boston, 1851),
I, 478. Justice Story s home town, Salem, Mass., with its clipper ships sailing to
all comers of the globe, had scarcely exceeded Rochester s growth in two full
centuries.

205 Una Pope-Hennessy, ed,, The Aristocratic Journey (New York, 1931), pp.

53~54-

206 Rochester in 1827, p. 138. The lack of statistics for 1817 forces a use of the
1818-1828 period, but these local counts are not entirely satisfactory, especially in
view of the fact that the Federal census of 1830 reported a population 282 less
than claimed in 1828. Nevertheless, as the local census counted an additional
1329 residents in "improvements" on the outer fringe of the village, practically
all of them newcomers, who were an integral part of the growing settlement not
to be annexed for several years, the 804 per cent increase cannot be far off. The
1828-1830 period was one of stagnation and hard times.

207 Hunt s Merchants Magazine, VIII, 506; U. S. Census, 1820 and 1830.

^ B Hunt s Merchants Magazine, VIII, 506; Parker, Lowell, pp. 68-69; Gene-
see Farmer, Aug. 25, 1832, p. 267. A contemporary description of Lowell in Roches
ter concludes with the observation: "No place in the United States, if we except
Rochester in our own state, has increased in value and population with such
rapidity."

200 The only possible predecessors were Washington, Cincinnati, and Louisville,
but each of these had required from 15 to 20 years to grow from 1000 to 9000,

TEE BOOM TOWN 101

open to -Lake Ontario, this town will be the resort of every tourist, and
Rochester . . . will stand unrivalled in the west. 210

Curiously, the projected canal with its potential bearing on Rochester s
future was not even mentioned in this lengthy description.

Astonishment at Rochester s growth characterized the reaction of
visitors throughout the twenties:* 11 And when Horatio Spafford, strug
gling with the manuscript of his second Gazetteer of New York State, at
tempted to record the town s statistics, he found each count out of date
before it reached the printer, and finally compromised by including
data for 1820, 1822, and 1823 ^ a happy solution from the historian s
point of view. Spafford, an experienced observer, knew what to expect
from forced improvements which wither on the morrow, yet he could
not help rejecting his own skepticism in Rochester s case:

Though it must be admitted that the growth has been rapid, almost be
yond example, even in our own country, of all others the best supplied with
such examples, yet, on a fair and candid examination of its great natural and
artificial advantages, it must [likewise] be admitted that Rochester has by
no means yet reached its maximum. 213

Spafford s difficulty in getting the town to pause for a portrait found
a parallel four years later when Everard Peck attempted to bring out
a second Directory. A local census had been ordered by the trustees, who
had discovered that mounting census statistics helped to stimulate lot
values. 21 * Many pertinent data were gathered to add to the historical
and descriptive material in the first Directory issued the year before, but
unfortunately it proved impossible to compile a suitable list of names,
occupations, and residences so rapidly was the community growing,
moving in from the East, moving on westward, and shifting about.
Accordingly, Rochester in 1827 appeared in February, devoid of a

210 Telegraph, Aug. 17, 1819,

211 P. Stansbury, A Pedestrian Tour of Two Thousand Three Hundred Miles in
North America (New York, 1822), pp. 92-93: "The beU tolled from a gothic spire
as I entered the populous and fast increasing town of Rochesterville [in the
autumn of 1821]. . . . In short all we beheld causes the mind to recur to the
scenes of Babel. . . . From one point I counted eighteen houses in the act of
building." "Journal of a Trip to Niagara in 1822," MS, Univ. Rochester: "Roches
ter ... has sprung up in the last 8 years and is rapidly improving. During the
last year there were more than 100 houses built." R. H. S., Pub., XVIII, 26, 32,
36, 38, 88, 90, 93-94.

212 Spafford, Gazetteer, pp. 189-191.
21S Spafford, Gazetteer, p. 190.

214 Jesse Hawley to Abelard Reynolds, Feb. 15, 1827, Autograph Letters. "Our
village census seems to give a great spring to business relating to real Estate in and
about the Village in the rise of Village Lots and preparations for extensive
building next season."

102 THE WATER-POWER CITY

directory of residents, a memorial in more than one respect to the
feverishly growing community. 215

*

The westward migration, already reaching into the upper lake country,
was at the same time filling in many gaps between the Genesee settle
ments. Monroe County increased in the twenties from 27,288 to 49,855,
Livingston from 21,006 to 27,729, Genesee from 18,578 to 26,008, Erie
from 10,834 to 35,719, and even old Ontario enjoyed a moderate in
crement. 216 Michigan Territory grew from 8,896 to 31,639, and a great
portion of the newcomers arrived by way of New York State after
1825 by the canal through Rochester. 217 In fact, many of these western
settlers hailed directly from the Genesee Country, where they had sold
their improvements to more substantial migrants from back East. 218

The Reynolds family played characteristic roles in this movement.
Abelard, the Rochester postmaster, soon attracted his brother, Albert,
to the Genesee Country, but a commercial speculation in Bloomfield
proved ill-advised, prompting Albert to head west in an unsuccessful
effort to dispose of his goods in a frontier market. When Abelard, having
stood bond along with a Rochester associate, was pressed for payment,
he set out himself for Ohio to recover the goods and make the best of a
bad speculation. Instead, losing track of his brother and the goods,
he enjoyed an extended exploratory journey through Ohio and the
Illinois country. Though greatly impressed, particularly with the latter
region, Abelard returned with the conclusion that "after all, perhaps
there is no place which combines a greater profusion and more interest
ing variety of benefits than Rochester." Albert turne d up later in
New Orleans, where another brother likewise sought his fortune, while
a sister, married to an erstwhile resident of Rochester, moved west to
Illinois; but none of the family prospered so well as Abelard, who ac
quired valuable land holdings in the village ^nd eventually netted a rich
reward. 219

The places of those who moved on westward were quickly seized by
newcomers from the East. Indeed, so many newcomers arrived that
often families wishing to settle could not find sufficient accommodation.
The one hundred or so new buildings erected annually in the early
twenties jumped to 352 in 1827, yet the demand continued. The first

215 Rochester, 1828. See the advertisement on the back of the title page.

216 N. Y. Census (1855), pp. xx, xxi, xxiii. The statistics are for 1820 and 1830.

217 George W. Fuller, Economic and Social Beginnings of Michigan (Lansing,
1916), pp. 73-74, 469-475; C. R. Tuttle, General History of the State of Michigan
(Detroit, 1876), p. 674.

218 Detroit Gazette, Nov. 13, 1817. "It is said that Twenty-five families from
one county (Genesee) in the State of N. Y. have recently arrived with the in
tention of settling at the River Raisin."

219 Reynolds Papers, MSS, Roch. Hist. Soc,, especially Abelard Reynolds to
Albert Reynolds, May n, 1828; July 4, 1845.

THE BOOM TOWN 103

Directory listed 1169 boarders against 1137 householders, and while
many of the former resided at the numerous taverns, the great majority
lodged in private dwellings which generally comprised but four rooms
and an attic. When the local census taker counted 1664 families in the
village at the close of 182 7, he found but 1474 buildings of all sorts. 220
The resulting congestion contributed alike to the outward extension
of the village and the mounting lot values. House rents soared until one
observer declared that even New York City homes could be leased
more reasonably; 2SL only the opportunity to take in boarders saved
many renters from eviction.

But if the center of the town with its stores, churches, hotels, and
private dwellings "all in motion creeping upwards," and its streets
"crowded with people, carts, stages, cattle, pigs, far beyond the reach
of numbers" seemed astonishing, it was as nothing in Basil HalPs
opinion compared with the suburbs where "small houses and large and
handsome ones" were being erected in the midst of stumps almost in
the shade of the virgin forest. 222

As inclusion within the village limits promised added respectability
to outlying improvements, agitation for an extension of the boundaries
was recurrent. Elisha Johnson especially wished to include his East
Rochester development within the corporation, 223 and in April, 1823,
the village officially spanned the river, adding about 357 acres on the
east bank to its west-side acreage of 655, and increasing the population
to an estimated 3700 by that June. 224 New demands for annexing the
improvements springing up on the southeastern and southwestern
borders of the village brought results when 226 acres were added, 225
Spacious as an area of 1238 acres at first appeared, new houses and
streets were constructed on the outskirts, and in 1827 a local census
found 1329 living "without the bounds, but on village allotment within
the proposed lines." ** Though ardently desired by many citizens, re
newed expansion waited upon the grant of a city charter in I834- 227

<

New England Yankees, seasoned by a longer or shorter residence in
New York State, comprised the predominant village stock. The small

^^ Rochester in 1827, pp. 138-139.

221 Telegraph, May 1 6, 1826.

222 Basil Hall, Travels in North America in the Years 1827 and 1828 (Edinburgh,
1829), pp. 36-38.

228 Telegraph, Jan. 14, Apr. i, 1823.

^Telegraph, Apr. 29, 1823; W. Earl Wetter, "The Expanding Boundaries of
Rochester," R. H. S., Pub., XIV, ^75-i77J Spafford, Gazetteer (1824), pp. 189-

191.

225 Weller, "Development of the Charter ... of Rochester," M.A. thesis,

Univ. of Roch., pp. 176^177.

226 Rochester in 1827, p. 138.

227 Advertiser, Dec. 28, 1830.

104 THE WATER-POWER CITY

number from Maryland and Pennsylvania would have been lost from
view, save for a sprinkling of colored folk, had not their Episcopal
predilection been supported by many Yorkers of long standing. A half-
dozen Dutch names in the first Directory represented a still older New
York strain, neither Yankee nor Episcopal in spirit, but equally proud
of its American tradition. 228 A few families, hailing directly from Ger
many or Scandinavia, served as the advance guard of a migration only
just beginning. 229 Larger but less distinguishable groups arrived from
England and Scotland, possibly after a stopover in Canada or the
East, 230 yet less than one out of twelve villagers of 1825 were classed
as aliens. 231

The most noticeable foreign group was the Irish, many of whom had
come as canal laborers. Several of their families settled about the log
cabin erected in 1817 by Rochester s Irish pioneer, James Bowling, on
the river road to Carthage. Six years before that road was renamed
St. Paul Street in 1829, the community known as Dublin 282 a colorful
if troublesome suburb gained inclusion within the corporate limits.
Though the Irish became the butt of many jokes in neighborhood
taverns, some of the good-natured humor reverberating in the pages
of local weeklies, 283 several young Irishmen of talent rose to positions of
leadership. At least two Irish Catholic Fathers served their growing
flock in Rochester during the twenties. 234 When the first daily paper
appeared late in 1826, a young Irishman, Henry O Reilly, arrived from
New York as editor. 285 O Reilly joined with his fellow countrymen in
organizing a local Hibernian Society, a mutual benevolent organiza
tion which sought also to encourage naturalization and a full assumption
of the responsibilities of citizenship. 286

228 Mrs. E. A. Handy, "The Dutch in Rochester," R. H. S., Pub., XIV, 65.

1229 Herman Plaefflin, Hundert jdhrige Geschichte des Deutschtums von Rochester
(Rochester, 1915), pp. 22-24; R. B. Anderson, The First Chapters of Norwegian
Immigration (Madison, 1895), pp. 62-70. Lars Larson, a member of the Nor
wegian settlement that located at the western edge of Monroe County in 1825,
moved to Rochester the next year to engage in canal boatbuilding, and soon his
home became a center for Norwegians migrating westward. Album, Jan. 3, 1826,
gives a contemporary account of their plight.

230 Marcus L. Hansen, The Mingling of the Canadian and American Peoples
(New Haven, 1940), I, 99-107.

^Alburn, Jan. 17, 1826. That is the percentage for Gates and Brighton,
credited with 674 aliens in a total population of 8566.

2fi2 K. J. Dowling, "Dublin," R. H. S., Pub., II, 233-237; Samson Scrapbook,
No. 41, p. 63.

288 Telegraph, May 25, 1824.

284 F. J. Zwierlein, "Catholics of Early Rochester," R. H. S., Pub., Ill, 190-192.

285 E. R. Foreman, "The Henry O Reilly Documents," R. H. S., Pub., IX, 124-
125; Dictionary of American Biography, XIV, 52-53.

286 Advertiser, July i, 1828. Fifteen names appeared on the committees con
nected with the organization of this society in Rochester.

THE BOOM TOWN 105

Rochester s new settlers were but a small contingent of the migrants,
both native and foreign, heading westward over the canal. 237 In Utica it
was observed:

Scarcely a boat from the east passes without a number of families on
board, with their household goods and farming utensils, bound to the
"Genesee Country," "Ohio" or the "Michigan Territory." There is no method
of ascertaining the number of this description of passengers on the canal,
for they pay no toll, and are not reported to the Collector s office: but some
estimation may be formed of the amount when it is known that wagons with
emigrants are literally swept from the roads, formerly the great thoroughfare
to the west. It is not uncommon to see from 30 to 40 women and children
comfortably stowed away on one of the large covered canal boats, as chirp as
a flock of black-birds. 238

"As chirp as a flock of black-birds" was scarcely the best metaphor,
since people seldom tear up their roots and bundle them into carpet
bags in so light a mood. Many doubtless reached Rochester after setting
out on a vaguely planned migration westward, but others followed the
lead of friends or relatives. The mail bags were full of advice to pro
spective migrants. Occasionally a stranger would address a local editor 239
or Colonel Rochester himself, asking "whether it would be advisable for
a young man (of respectable character & who can bring the best recom
mendation) to remove to Rochester to engage in Business of any Kind
and what particular business would be the most advantageous?" 240
Or a letter from the mill town to the home folks would read in part:

You will perhaps be surprised to receive a letter from me from this place.

. . After I wrote you I stayed some time in New York, but could find no
stand. ... I concluded to try my luck elsewhere, and accordingly came to
this place and have been very fortunate. I have rented a new store . . .
[which] will be ready to occupy in about two weeks; when I shall put into
it a good assortment of groceries & provisions and try my luck. ... I tend
store . . . until it is done, at the rate of $16 a month.* 41

Great as was the influx of newcomers, the growth of Rochester
sprang in part from the pioneers. With the ratio of birtts to deaths

237 Assembly Documents (1827), p. n; David M. Schneider, The History of
Public Welfare in New York State (Chicago, 1938), pp. 130-139; Joseph Picker
ing, Inquiries of an Emigrant (London, 1832), p. 52. Pickering gives detailed ad
vice on the facilities available for English emigrants at New York, Albany, and
along the Erie Canal to Lockport, based on his own trip in 1824. Album, May 9,
1826. The first full season on the completed canal saw crude shacks erected at
Buffalo to shelter them until boat passage to the West could be secured.

238 Telegraph, May 25, 1824.

259 Daniel McGlashen to Thurlow Weed, Albany, Nov. 7, 1823, Weed Papers.

240 Thomas Shriver to Col. Rochester, Sandy Mount, Md., Feb. 15, 1824, Roch
ester Letters.

241 A. Kasson to Andrew Root, Rochester, May 25, 1826, Autograph Letters,

io6 THE WATER-POWER CITY

better than two to one, 343 births were recorded in 1825, approximately
a third of the increment that year. Though it was frequently remarked
that no native had yet reached maturity, 242 the youngsters of the early
days were growing up. In the summer of 1824, Hamlet Scrantom s third
son, Edwin, took over the editorship of the Republican, successor to the
Gazette on which he had served as apprentice a few years before. 243
In January, 1827, the young editor sat down and wrote a letter full of
the balmy spirits of the town to his representative at Albany, none other
than Abelard Reynolds, pioneer saddler and postmaster:

Business goes on, and briskly. There is an usual quantity of wheat bought
. . .; hammers clink, carts rattle, streetmen bawl, boys halloo, and cryers
cry "hear ye," &c. Lawyers and doctors are thick as ever. Idlers and dandies
strut as usual. The theaters, museums, pictures and other curiosities [are
attended] about as abundantly as formerly, and men "in the full fruition of
unrestrained liberty," pass to and fro, gathering substance and leaving "pomp
and circumstance" behind them. The streets are crowded, now tis sleighing,
from one end to the other. I counted a day or two since 150 teams in and
about the streets of Buffalo, Carroll, and Exchange. Your business at the
P. 0. goes on as usual. ... I saw [your clerk] Stoddard collecting a few
days since and I thought he made a good fist at it. Money was never more
scarce than now, when every merchant seems making remittances. But it will
be better. The canal will open in less than two months and that will create
a new era in the affairs of men and things. How does the business of legisla
tion suit you? Methinks you are somewhat lost. You could easier tell a man
whether his ticket was a blank or a prize than rise on the assembly floor. . . .

Enos Stone sold upwards of 100 acres of land near where he lives, not
including Ms present homestead, to Messrs. Peck, Bissell and Riley, for
$35,000. They are apportioning [it] into village lots. Stebbins and Cuyer . .
are selling off lots. ... I bought two lots there for $200 each. They will
now rise. They are selling rapidly. . , . F. H. Cuming has sold his brick
house to A, Samson for $3,500. . . .

Had you as soon send me your name for the note I spoke to you of? My
brother [Elbert] will secure you. ... I will remember it, as I ought, in
gratitude. I call upon you with reluctance, but aware as I am that not the
least injury can or shall come on you. I shall be proud to consider you a
friend and one indeed. Please draw a note for 12 months jointly and severally
for $200, sign and send to me, and much oblige your very

Grateful Friend,

E. Scrantom 244

The reply proved equally revealing of the spirit of Rochester s
founders, for in the midst of much reckless optimism there ever re-

242 Album, Jan. 17, 1826.

248 Hamlet Scrantom, Journal, entry of July 27 and Aug. 2, 1824, MS, Roch.
Hist. Soc.

244 Edwin Scrantom to Abelard Reynolds, Rochester, Jan. 27, 1827, Edwin
Scrantom Letters, MSS, Roch. Hist. Soc.

THE BOOM TOWN 107

mained a desire for restraint. The request for a loan was granted after
security was received, but a note of warning was sounded:

I have always had the utmost confidence in the ultimate success and con
sequences of our Village, the numerous opinions to the contrary notwithstand
ing. There is however in all human events, a point beyond which we ought
not, we cannot go, and such I am fearful is the extravagant land speculations
now going on in Rochester. The present purchasers will no doubt make
money by their operation, but that a reaction will be the final result of this
persevering, chimerical project there cannot remain a doubt, and how far
that will effect, and impede the flourishing condition of our famous village
it is difficult for me to predick. 245

Only a few months later Abelard Reynolds put such doubts aside
and embarked upon the construction of the Arcade, the most extensive
and elegant commercial structure in western New York in that day. 248

245 Abelard Reynolds to Edwin Scrantom, Albany, Feb. 3, 1827.

246 Amy H. Croughton, "Historic Reynolds Arcade," R. H. S., Pub., VIII, 97-99.

CHAPTER V

ORGANIZATION OF THE BOOM TOWN

1817-1828

TRADITIONAL ATTITUDES and conflicting aspirations complicated the
establishment of Rochester s civic and institutional functions.
Though economic factors exerted their influence, the most im
portant developments arose from the increased complexity of the com
munity s affairs. Repeated efforts to establish in Rochester the close-
knit village patterns familiar in the communities back East met scant
success. Before it could be properly groomed according to Yankee
standards, the growing settlement was to burst the civic and cultural
as well as the economic buttons off its ill-fitting village frock and emerge
as the strutting "Young Lion of the West."

EARLY Civic PROBLEMS AND REGULATIONS

The village quickly discovered the urgent necessity for a careful
regulation of its affairs, but the lack of precedents for such forthright
action as the problems of the community demanded seriously handi
capped the authorities. Villages simply had not grown up so rapidly, and
it seemed unwise to assume the increased powers the town s size and
activity required. Nevertheless, numerous Yankee mores were in
corporated in the bylaws, though experience usually forced their
modification.

The original charter of 1817 provided a form of government similar
to that of other recently incorporated villages modelled on the New
England town. 1 Chief authority resided in the town meeting, which
elected seventeen officers (including five trustees), voted necessary
taxes not to exceed $1000 a year, and exercised other limited powers.
The trustees had authority to adopt bylaws regulating fire hazards,
nuisances, streets, markets, and some forty related matters of public
concern. A village president presided over the meeting of the trustees as
well as those of the "freeholders and inhabitants qualified to vote for

1 Weller, "Development of the Charter ... of Rochester," pp. 13-24. See also
John F. Sly, Town Government in Massachusetts: 16201930 (Cambridge, 1930),
pp. 93-103; Ernest S. Griffith, History of American City Government: The Colo
nial Period (New York, 1938), pp. 75-125.

ORGANIZATION OF THE BOOM TOWN 109

members of assembly." 2 Scarcely more than one hundred were eligible to
attend the public meetings in 1817, yet their number approached one
thousand by 1823 a result of the town s growth and the more liberal
state franchise.

The board of trustees hastened at its early meetings to adopt the
customary village regulations. Thus the first bylaws declared that the
public highways should neither be cluttered with building materials nor
used for the racing of horses. Fines were prescribed for permitting hogs
or cows to run at large or for throwing dead animals into the streets.
The fire hazard prompted the requirement that each house should be
equipped with a fire bucket, that chimneys and stove pipes should be
kept clean. No hunting or firing of guns and no daylight bathing in the
river or mill races were tolerated within the village limits. Licenses
were required to sell liquor or slaughter animals within the bounds. 3

Several of these problems soon demanded further action. The in
habitants voted $350 for general expenses and necessary village im
provements, such as books for the village records, fire hooks and ladders
to supplement the efforts of the bucket brigade, and a ditch to drain
the swamp back of Christopher s tavern. 4 A secure pound was needed
for stray cattle pending the collection of fines against the owners. 5 Early
in October the trustees appointed a fire company to replace the un
organized citizens bucket brigade; similar action created a citizens
night patrol six months later. 6 But before the village could function
satisfactorily it required an official seal, and the proper symbol for an
enterprising town appeared to be an arm and a hammer. 7

-<

The simple solutions and modest expenditures of the first year soon
proved inadequate. Not only did each of the above functions quickly
develop into a major village activity, but new problems pressed for
solution. As the time and energy required of the various officers made
some compensation desirable, fees were prescribed for most services,
while an honorarium of $10 a year was provided for each trustee. The

2 The constitution of 1777 limited the electorate to male inhabitants of one
year s residence in one county who possessed a freehold valued at 20 or rented
a tenement for 40 shillings and paid taxes to the state.

3 "Records of the Doings of the Trustees of the Village of Rochester," MS,
June 2, 1817, Film copy in Roch. Pub. Library.

4 "Records of the Doings of the Inhabitants of the Village of Rochester," MS,
June 10, 1817, Film copy in Roch. Pub. Library.

6 "Doings of the Trustees," July -31, 1817.

6 "Doings of the Trustees," Oct. 9, 18-17; May 7, 1818.

7 "Doings of the Trustees," Oct. 9, 1817. The Village Seal remained authorative
until 1834, when the newly established City Council adopted in its place the
official seal of the Mayor s Court. See (Edward R. Foreman) "The Official Seal of
Rochester," R. H. S., Pub., XI, 34*-343-

no THE WATER-POWER CITY

tax voted for the second year reached the $1000 statutory maximum. 8
Minor revisions in the bylaws were voted from time to time, but not
until 1824 was a basic amendment of the charter seriously urged,
though it did seem fitting to drop the "ville" from the town s name in

I822. 9

The fire hazard proved to be the most urgent village concern. The
burning of Francis Brown s mill early in 1818 10 spurred the inhabitants
to vote the purchase of a "fire engine" a hand pump attached to a
tank fed by the bucket brigade. 11 When the first real test came in
December, 1819, the stream of water could not reach the second story,
and by morning several buildings near the Four Corners, including the
first newspaper office, had gone up in smoke. 12 The trustees promptly
ordered householders to provide one fire bucket for every two fireplaces
and a ladder sufficient to reach the top of the building. A small shed
housed the fire engine on the public square until that site was chosen
for the courthouse, when a new location was selected in the meadow
between the Reynolds and Christopher taverns. A lane, opening into
Carroll (State) Street, provided access to the public "reservoir" fed by
a log "aqueduct" which carried the overflow of the Red Mill thirty rods
north to a central water trough for the use of both fire fighters and
thirsty horses. 13

The record of a half-dozen fires in 1821 was reduced by vigilant care
during the next year, 14 but by 1823 it became evident that one gasping
hand pump would no longer suffice. The inhabitants convened that
December to consider the trustees recommendations for two new en
gines, a length of leather hose, and a set of ladders mounted on wheels.
Though advocates of economy cut the order to one new engine and a
ladder truck, 15 a second fire company soon appeared, engendering fric
tion which called for the appointment of a fire chief two years later.
More vigorous action waited upon further amendment of the charter. 18

The character of several early fires roused suspicions of incendiarism,
suggesting the need for an efficient police. As the citizen s patrol was
not giving full satisfaction, many of its members sought realese from

8 "Records ... of the Inhabitants," May 4, 1818.

9 "Doings of the Trustees," Jan. 8, 1823; N. Y. Laws of 1822, Ch. 192.

10 Ontario Repository, May 5, 18x8; Rochester Telegraph, Jan. 19, 1819.

11 "Records ... of the Inhabitants," May 4, 1818.

12 Telegraph, Dec. 7, 1819.

18 "Doings of the Trustees," Dec. 9, 1819, May, June 22, 1820; "Records . . .
of the Inhabitants," Dec. 20, 1819, Nov. 29, 1820, May 7, 1821 ; Charter, By-Laws
and History of the Rochester Fire Department from 1817 to 1882 (Rochester,
1882).

14 Newspaper Index, Roch. Pub. Library.

15 "Doings of the Trustees," Dec. 12, 1823; "Records ... of the Inhabitants,"
Dec. n, 1823, Jan. 3, 1824; Telegraph, Feb. 17, 1824.

"^History of the Rochester Fire Department, p. 37.

ORGANIZATION OP THE BOOM TOWN in

their thankless responsibilities. Accordingly in December, 1819, the
inhabitants voted $80 to employ a night watch for as many months
as the fund would allow. 17 Similar appropriations in successive winters
apparently achieved preventive results, for no major offense was re
ported in the village until August, 1821, when a suspected burglar was
frightened away from Hart and Saxton s store at the Four Corners. 18

The creation of Monroe County with its seat in Rochester and the
construction of a jail at a cost of $3674 10 focused attention on the
crime problem. At least thirty criminal sentences were handed down to
various major and minor offenders within the county by the Circuit
Court in 1823 and i824. 20 Popular concern over a convict force laboring
on the aqueduct increased the expenditure for the night watch to $200,
permitting the employ of four watchmen in 1823. 21 Escapes from the
jail and from the convict camp added to the anxiety. 22 One local editor
declared that "probably no place in the Union the size of Rochester is
so much infested with the dregs and outcasts of society as this village." w
Following a popular fad of the day, a group of citizens petitioned the
legislature for authority to establish a "stepping mill" in the village, 24
though nothing came of that proposal. As it no longer appeared safe to
dispense with a watch during the warm months, a Vigilant Society,
formed by a score of young men, volunteered to make the nightly
rounds during the balmy season at no expense to the town. 25 It was
rapidly becoming evident that additional outlays could not long be
delayed.

Centers for the disorderly elements appeared in the numerous gro
ceries and gaming rooms, prompting the suggestion that the village strike
this evil at the source by refusing or limiting licenses. 26 An attempt in
1817 to collect fees from the groceries proved so ineffective, however,
that fines had to be levied two years later on those operating without
permits. 27 In 1823 grocery licenses were standardized at $10 a year,
and $25 fees were collected for each billiard table and ninepin alley.
For $10 a showman acquired permission to perform in the village for

17 Telegraph, July 28, 1818; "Records ... of the Inhabitants," Dec. 20, 1819.

18 Telegraph, Aug. 21, 1821.

19 William F. Peck, History of the Police Department of Rochester (Rochester,
1903), p. 29.

20 Telegraph, Mar. 23, Sept. 14, 1824; Jan. 25, Feb. 22, 1825.

21 "Records ... of the Inhabitants," June 24, 1822.

22 Monroe Republican, Sept. 25, 1821; Rochester Daily Advertiser, Dec. 18,
1828.

^Tekgraph, Feb. 10, 1824.

24 N. Y. Assembly Journal (1824), pp. 585, 684; Schneider, Public Welfare in
New York State, pp. 150-155.

25 Telegraph, Mar. 16, 1824.

26 "Doings of the Trustees," Aug. 19, Sept. 5, 1826.

^"Doings of the Trustees," Jan. 4, 1819; May 4, 13, 1820; July 6, 1821.

ii2 THE WATER-POWER CITY

one week or less. 28 The conviction that billiard tables and ninepin alleys
contributed to the increase of crime and pauperism impelled the trustees,
in 1825, to refuse all licenses and to resort instead to the practice of
fining those who maintained them at the rate of three dollars a month. 29

Public health precautions became more necessary with the commu
nity s growth. As some of the swamps that originally covered much of
the village site failed to dry up after the removal of the forest, many
drains had to be dug. 30 The reputation of the Genesee Country for fever
and ague spurred the drainage program, which became still more urgent
as the better houses acquired cellars or basement kitchens. A regulation
of 1823 directed that these must be kept dry. 31 When a case of smallpox
appeared that year, the trustees paid for the patient s care in an isolated
house east of the river, ambitiously designated as a "hospital" in the
village records. 32 Rigid regulations about the disposal of refuse and the
building of necessaries helped in a measure to keep disease under con
trol, except for the usual epidemics of whooping cough and measles
among the children. 33 But the popular demand for the construction of
a sewer down Buffalo Street had to await a grant of larger tax powers. 84

A closely related problem was that of supplying fresh water. An old
Indian spring proved sufficient until the summer of 1820, when several
private wells were dug. The demand for public wells, put off by an in
creased flow at the spring that fall, 35 soon reappeared and with it came
an abortive attempt to form a Rochester Aqueduct Association. 38 Mean
while, encouragement to those who extended the use of private wells to
their neighbors failed to relieve the village of dependence on enter
prising water carriers. 37

Among the requirements of the expanding community was a new
burial ground. The rise in land value about the original plot, donated
by Rochester, Fitzhugh, and Carroll, on Falls (Spring) Street, prompted
the sale of that area and the purchase of a larger tract some distance
out on Buffalo Street. Removal of the existing graves was financed out
of the surplus, and still a sufficient balance remained for the purchase
of a public hearse to carry the dead to their last resting place in proper

28 "Doings of the Trustees," July 5, 1823.

29 "Doings of the Trustees," May 16, 1825.
^"Doings of the Trustees," May 4, 1820; June 30, 1826.

81 "Doings of the Trustees," Feb. 5, 1823.

82 "Doings of the Trustees," Oct. n, 1823; July 6, 1824; "Records ... of the
Inhabitants," Nov. 16,11824.

88 Telegraph, July 23^ Aug. 13, 1822.

84 "Doings of the Tr^tees," July 4, 1824.

85 "Records ... of the Inhabitants," Dec. 6, 1820.

**Tekgraph, Dec. 17, 1822; Nov. n, 1823; Assembly Journal (1823), pp. 733,
748; Assembly Journal (1824), p. 24.

87 "Doings of the Trustees," Dec. 12, 1823; June 30, 1826.

ORGANIZATION OF THE BOOM TOWN 113

state. The upkeep of the cemetery seemed assured from the sale of
grave lots. 38

Reconstruction of the Rochester bridge was a task the village hoped
the newly formed county would undertake. After considerable agitation
the legislature in 1823 granted the county authority to raise $14,000
for that purpose, but when the village learned that one-fourth of the
cost was to be levied against its property valued at barely one-tenth
of the county s total a loud remonstrance occurred. 39 Delays ensued
until authority for a modified plan of reconstruction arrived, enabling
Elisha Johnson, the east-side promoter and engineer, to commence work
under a $6,000 contract shortly after the spring freshets in 1824. But
Johnson s plan of extending the eastern abutment out to the original
first pier brought protests from several west-side millers who feared the
aggravation of river floods. Finally, by excavating from the river bed
sufficient stone to compensate for the narrowed channel, the issue was
temporarily side-stepped, and after considerable Inconvenience the
bridge reopened in December. 40

The condition of the streets presented a most baffling problem. Since
funds were lacking for street improvement, all that could be attempted
in the early twenties was to provide for sidewalks. To this end the trus
tees in January, 1822, ordered property owners on the commercial sec
tions of Buffalo and Carroll Streets to construct 12 -foot walks in front
of their properties. A railing with suitable hitching posts was to be
erected near the outer edge, and the job was to be completed by May
loth. Though the time had to be extended a month and fines levied
against two delinquents, the improvement was a boon to the village that
summer. The only outlay by the trustees was $150 for the crosswalks
at the Four Corners. 41 Sidewalks were ordered extended along several
of the lesser streets the next year, a regulation applied east of the river
in i824. 42 The only other street improvement during these years pro
vided oil lamps at both ends of the bridge, to be lit on dark nights in
order to safeguard late travelers from plunging into the river. 43

^"Doings of the Trustees," Oct. 18, 1821; Jan. 18, 1822; "Records ... of the
Inhabitants," May 7, 1821. The new cemetery was located on the site now occu
pied by the Rochester General Hospital.

39 Monroe County Supervisors, "Proceedings, Oct. 12, 1822," Proceedings, 1822-
1849 (Rochester, 1892), p. 27; Assembly Journal (1823), pp. 522, 735; "Doings
of the Trustees," Apr. 3, 1823; David H. Burr, An Atlas of the State of New
York (New York, 1829), plate 45. The total real property valuation for the
county in 1825 was $4,478,820, while Brighton and Gates added up to $1,263,900,
not all in the village, of course.

40 Dorothy S. Truesdale, "Historic Main Street Bridge," Rochester History, III,
no. 2 (April, 1941), 5J Telegraph, Jan. 4, 1825.

* x Telegraph, July 17, 1822; "Records . , . of the Inhabitants," June 24, 1822.
* 2 "Doings of Trustees," Feb. 5, 1823, May 18, 1824.
43 "Records ... of the Inhabitants," Jan. 3, 1824.

H4 THE WATER-POWER CITY

*

The need for more adequate civic functions, resulting in large part
from the town s rapid growth, inspired frequent demands for a city
charter. 4 * Several of the trustees, burdened with increased civic responsi
bilities, were heartily in favor of municipal status, notably Dr. Matthew
Brown, whose years of service on the village board, together with his
activities as the chief proprietor of Frankfort, had made him an out
standing Village Father. However, those who feared to delegate the
taxing power to a group of aldermen dominated the public meeting held
in December, 1825, when some three or four hundred citizens gathered
to consider the issue. 45 An application was reluctantly endorsed for a
revised village charter, dividing the town into five wards for the election
of officers, raising the tax limit to $2,000, and extending the powers of
the trustees. 46

The issue provoked a degree of levity on the part of one local editor
who did not view the community s bounding growth with too much
concern:

Although Rochester is in point of business the first village in the state,
we are too young to ape the fashions or merit the name of a city. Our streets
are neither paved nor lighted, we have no markets, no shipping, no theatres,
or public gardens, no promenades for exquisites, and our aldermen would
experience a great scarcity of turtle. Besides, as was remarked by one of the
speakers at the meeting, "while Buffalo, & Brooklyn, & Utica are striving for
city charters, to become a city can be considered no great trick." 47

The more Rochesterians thought about it, the more they were con
vinced that to become a city was not their object rather they desired
a better village. When news arrived that the revised charter had passed
the legislature, the same editor commented: "Heretofore, disorder has
bid defiance to wholesome law, but the presumption now is, that a new
state of things will take place." ** Twenty-four village officers had to be
elected from the several wards, and it was desirable, the editor con
tinued, "that good and able men be chosen," since their authority now
extended over a total of fifty-nine specific matters. That the object of
improving the village, both physically and morally, had not been for
gotten was evident from the inclusion of the power to build sewers as
well as to regulate the sale of "spirituous liquors." 49

Whatever the desires of the villagers, Rochester was rapidly develop-

*** Telegraph, Dec. 28, 1824; Mar. 8, Apr. 26, 1825.

48 Monroe Republican, Dec. 20, 1825.

46 N. Y. Laws of 1826, Ch. 140; Weller, "Development of the Charter ... of
Rochester," pp. 26-38.

47 Album, Dec. 27, 1825. See also, Griffith, American City Government, pp. 413-
417, passim, for evidence of the hold of the town-meeting tradition among
migrating Yankees.

48 Album, Apr. u, 1826.

49 Weller, "Development of the Charter ... of Rochester," pp. 31-33; An Act

ORGANIZATION OP THE BOOM TOWN 115

ing the proportions and the problems of a small city. With a population
nearing seven thousand in the summer of 1826, all rivals in the state
west of Albany were surpassed not only in numbers but also in the
urgency of village affairs. The newly elected trustees, all save Matthew
Brown, who was chosen president, being inexperienced, soon found
themselves overburdened with pressing problems. In place of the lei
surely meetings held once every two or three months during previous
years, the trustees gathered for busy sessions every week or so and
sometimes twice a week. For this extensive public service they received
the modest reward of $15 a year, yet the dignities of the office were
still eagerly sought by leading citizens. 50

The trustees first task was to formulate a policy respecting groceries
and theatrical performances. The specific control over these affairs
granted by the charter prompted early applications for licenses, and the
former device of laying the petitions on the table would not suffice
while the press was calling for action. 51 With a new theater in process
of construction, supported by local capital, and a traveling performer
requesting leave to exhibit his caravan of living animals in the old
circus building, 52 the prospect that other showmen would soon visit the
most thriving town west of Albany forced a decision.

Unfortunately the trustees were scarcely in agreement themselves.
After an attempt to ban theater licenses was voted down, two to one,
a modified ordinance fixed the annual license fee at $150 and levied
fines of $25 against the management and $5 against each performer for
every unauthorized performance. 53 Unable to afford a year s license, the
proprietor of the new Rochester Theater determined to defy the law. 54
A suit to collect the prescribed penalties ended, after much argument,
in a compromise, permitting the operation of the theater Monday
through Friday at $30 a week. 55 The village was not as completely
protected from questionable influences as some desired, 56 but pleasure
was expressed over the fact that "many who are in a measure non
residents among us may contribute to the improvement of our Village,
and thereby Lighten the tax on the actual residents." ^

of Incorporation of the Village of Rochester, Together with the By Laws <$
Ordinances of the Board of Trustees (Rochester, 1826).

50 The new board was comprised of Matthew Brown, president, William
Brewster, Vincent Mathews, John Mastick, and Giles Bolton.

51 "Doings of the Trustees," May 18, 1826; Album, Apr. 25, 1826.

52 Monroe Republican, Mar. 7, n, Apr. 4, 1826; Album, Apr. 25, 1826; "Doings
of the Trustees," May 23, 1826.

^"Doings of the Trustees," June i, 3, 1826; Act of Incorporation and By-
Laws (1826), pp. 27-29.

64 Monroe Republican, June 13, 1826.

55 "Doings of the Trustees," July 6, 8, 10, Dec. 12, 1826.

56 "Doings of the Trustees," Aug. 19, Dec. 5, 1826.
*i Album, Apr. 25, 1826.

n6 THE WATER-POWER CITY

Ordinances against billiard tables and other gambling devices and
for the regulation of groceries produced a similar division of opinion. 58
The community had grown to the point where the number of travelers
and other strangers thronging the taverns, eager to relax around billiard
tables or to purchase whiskey even on the Sabbath, made it difficult
for the respectable villagers to maintain all the civic regulations. It
proved particularly difficult to enforce the Sabbath closing rule on gro
ceries or to subdue the canal boatmen who passed through Rochester
on that day. 59 Groceries were now encountered at almost every turn.
In 1827 nearly a hundred licenses were granted, netting, together with
the occasional fines, a considerable sum for the treasury. 60 The issue was
destined to arouse more positive action in the years ahead.

*

Meanwhile, other problems pressed for attention. The destruction of
half a dozen or so buildings each year in the mid-twenties kept the fire
hazard constantly before the trustees. 61 The second ordinance adopted
under the new powers in 1826 prescribed more stringent regulations of
fireplaces and other heating arrangements and directed the fire wardens
to make periodic inspections. 62 When two wardens reported the existence
of numerous substandard flues in their wards, the village attorney
brought suit against their owners, prompting householders to employ
chimney sweeps, 63 Under the direction of Fire Chief Samuel Works, the
fire companies were reorganized, but the conviction that the major im
provement needed was a new fire engine finally led the inhabitants to
vote $1000 for its purchase. Everard Peck ; journeying to New York
and Philadelphia in search of the best model, returned in October, 1827,
with an engine purchased at the latter place for $716 and three hundred
feet of leather hose for $216. A third engine company quickly formed,
and the villagers gathered at nine o clock one fall morning to witness
a demonstration of their fire-fighting equipment on Mumford s Meadow
above the main falls. 64 A more tragic demonstration occurred two months
later when Peck s paper mill caught fire, resulting in the first Rochester
fireman s fatality and the loss of the building. 65

Increased activity marked several other civic functions. The night
watch was enlarged to ten men in 1827, each patrolling his ward for

68 Ordinances (1826), pp. 27, 31, 33.

* Telegraph, Mar. 8, 1825; Rochester Observer, Mar. 17, 1827, July 22, 1828.

60 "Doings of the Trustees," May 8, 23, 1827 ; and passim.

61 The Newspaper Index lists 19 homes, shops, and mills destroyed during 1825,
1826, and 1827.

62 Ordinances (1826) , pp. 20-24.

^"Doings of the Trustees," June 31, 1826; Dec. 4, 1827.

64 "Doings of the Trustees," May 29, July 3, Oct. 23, 27, 1827.

65 James H. Kelly, History of the Rochester Fire Department, p. 38; Telegraph,
Dec. 22, 1827.

ORGANIZATION OF THE BOOM TOWN 117

half the night and receiving $10 a month for the service. 66 The trustees
subsidized the digging of half a dozen private wells, making them avail
able to public use, and opened two others at central points on public
property. 67 The complaints of numerous renters prompted an ordinance
directing the construction of stone vaults under the necessaries required
on all occupied properties; and the trustees further stipulated that a
peck of lime must be dumped into each vault once a month. 68 Among
those fined for maintaining pig sties was Russel Ensworth, whose hog
pen back of his tavern at the Four Corners was declared a public
nuisance. 69 Though health expenditures occasionally proved necessary,
a board of health was not appointed until January, 1828. The over
abundance of peddlers and the frequent employ of lads to cry out the
wares of new merchants prompted licensing regulations which limited
the number and required the use of a bell instead of a horn as less
likely to frighten passing teams. 71

A new problem developed as numerous teamsters crowded the streets
of the thriving market town with loads of hay, grain, and other produce.
Every attempt to prescribe the points at which such wagons should
stand while awaiting buyers brought protests from lot owners, 72 and the
only acceptable stand for market wagons appeared to be near the west
end of the bridge. 73 The desirability of establishing a public market
there was further emphasized by complaints concerning the two slaugh
terhouses located within the town with inadequate sewerage facilities. 74
Elisha Johnson, who had but recently completed the reconstruction of
the central bridge, proposed that a market be erected at its northwest
corner extending out over the river to the first pier, thus providing
ample room near an abundant supply of water for cleaning the stalls.
A committee, reporting in favor of this plan, recommended that the
bridge piers be extended seventy feet down the river to support the
market. 75 The inhabitants, quickly approving the recommendation, au
thorized an expenditure of $iooo. 76

In more than one respect the market proved to be a focal point in
the town s development. With its construction a bold step was taken in
advancing private property rights and street shops out over the river.

66 "Doings of the Trustees," Nov. 20, 1827.

67 "Doings of the Trustees," June 30, July 10, Dec. 12, 1826; Aug. 7, 14, Dec. 4,
1827.

68 Ordinances (1826), pp. 24-25, 31.

69 "Doings of the Trustees," Sept. 5, 1826.

70 "Doings of the Trustees," Sept. 28, 1826; Apr. 17, Jan. 15, 1828.

71 "Doings of the Trustees," June 19, July 10, 1826; July 10, 1827.

72 "Doings of the Trustees," Sept 5, 12, 26, 1826.

73 "Doings of the Trustees," Aug. 14, 1826.

74 "Doings of the Trustees," July 29, Aug. 19, 1826.

75 "Doings of the Trustees," Sept 5, 19, 1826.

76 "Records ... of the Inhabitants," July 8, 1826; Advertiser, July 8, 1828.

n8 THE WATER-POWER CITY

The village paid Charles H. Carroll $200 for his riparian rights to the
site, thus prejudicing its case against other encroachments soon made
from the east bank. 77 Though it was nearly half a century before the
river was blotted from sight in Main Street, the process of joining the
two parts of the town was considerably hastened by the market building.

The market provided a fiscal turning point as well, for the $1000
authorized would not even -cover the contract cost, compelling the
trustees to negotiate their first sizable loan. Before the work was com
pleted the expenditure reached $3000, and, denied the necessary assess
ment, the trustees sold market stock to cover the outlay. 78 All the avail
able stalls were leased before the structure opened early in May, 1827,
requiring a clerk to supervise the market s affairs. With huckstering and
butchering in other parts of the town prohibited, Rochester acquired a
central mart for the convenience of the butchers and produce merchants
of the surrounding territory. 79 Its standing as a market town was meas
urably enhanced.

Less striking perhaps, but more extensive and necessary, were the
street and sewer developments launched under the second charter. The
Buffalo Street sewer, started in 1824, was pressed forward with vigor
in the summer of 1826.* Though little more than a shallow ditch with
flagstone sides and capping, 81 the sewer diverted surface water from the
backyard cesspools which were proving to be undesirable neighbors to
the public wells. By the end of 1827, more than a mile and a half of
sewers or drains had been constructed, and a discharge opened into the
river below the bridge.* 2 The expense, as in the case of the sidewalks,
fell on adjacent property holders, though not without frequent protests
from those who preferred the simple methods of the past. 88 Approxi
mately two miles of additional sidewalks were constructed in 1827, but
scarcely a beginning had yet been made at the task of paving the
streets. 8 *

Authority to proceed with further street improvements was finally
granted by an amendment to the charter early in i828. 85 Mill Street
(renamed Exchange Street because the busy commercial activity near
the canal had forced the migration of many mills to the main falls

77 Truesdale, "Main Street Bridge," pp. 7#.

78 "Doings of the Trustees," Oct. 28, 31, 1826; Jan. 23, 1827.

79 "Doings of the Trustees," May 2, 5, 29, 1827.

80 "Doings of the Trustees," July 10, 1826.

81 "Doings of the Trustees," May 8, June 19, July 20, 1827. The specifications for
these sewers varied; one called for a ditch^ one foot in width lined to a height of
1 8 inches and covered at least 15 inches above the capping. A contractor en
gaged to construct a slightly larger sewer at the rate of $11 per rod.

82 Rochester in 1827, pp. 139, 144.

88 "Doings of the Trustees," Aug. 17, 1827.

84 "Doings of the Trustees," Dec. 26, 1827; Rochester in 1827, p. 139.

85 N. Y. Laws of 1828, ch. 120; "Doings of the Trustees," Jan. 15, 1828.

ORGANIZATION OF THE BOOM TOWN 119

where a new Mill Street was kid out) was forthwith extended south
through Colonel Rochester s old pear orchard to the boundary of the
village, 86 Court Street was opened from Exchange Street eastward in
line with the new bridge that had been erected by subscription south of
the aqueduct in 1826, connecting on the east side with the two roads
to Pittsford.* 7 Several new sewers were opened, and rock broken in the
jail yard was dumped into the more obvious mud holes which had
brought the town an unpleasant notoriety. 88 Labor for such repairs came
from male residents, each required to give two days a year and an
additional day for every $300 in real property within the limits. 89

The sprawling growth of the town compelled the trustees to correct
the duplication of street names in 1828.^ Other changes marked the
shifting functions of varied areas. Falls Street was renamed Spring
Street because the blasting of the upper falls to facilitate the free flow
of the river under the aqueduct had left the main falls at the other end
of town the only obvious cataract in the village. Aqueduct Street was
laid out through the old mill yard, terminating at the western end of
that massive stone structure. River Street on the east side (which con
tinued north as Market Street and Clyde Street) was renamed St. Paul
Street in recognition of the imposing second Episcopal church being
erected on its route. Finally, at the close of the year, it was considered
appropriate to place street signs at prominent corners for the conven
ience of strangers seeking their way about. 91

RUDIMENTS OF CULTURE

Closely related to the emerging civic functions were the public and
private schools and other agencies designed to provide the community
with cultural facilities. The booming twenties witnessed the establish
ment of many such institutions, and as the decade advanced the narrow
village horizon of several of the early organizations was considerably
broadened. Yet the increased size and complexity of the community
made the accomplishments appear small and inadequate until, in the
thirties, a powerful quickening of spirit brought fresh vitality to many
local societies.

The common district schools represented the community s earliest
public efforts in the cultural field. Unfortunately, as the district schools
sprang from the decentralized township authority, the occasional efforts
of the village or the state to supply educational leadership produced

86 "Doings of the Trustees," July 8, 15, 1828.

87 "Doings of the Trustees," Aug. 12, 1828.

88 Rochester Gem and Ladies Amulet, Mar. 27, 1830.
^"Doings of the Trustees," June 17, 1828.

90 "Doings of the Trustees," July 15, 1828. Court, Franklin, and Washington
streets had each appeared in duplicate.

91 "Doings of the Trustees," Dec. n, 1828.

120 THE WATER-POWER CITY

few results during the decade. The rapid increase in the number of
children of school age in the village, by overcrowding the school build
ings, aggravated the problem of dealing with those unable to pay the
small tuition fees. 92 The long fight to convert these humble institutions
into useful community agencies started during the twenties, but real
achievements waited upon the bolder inspiration and larger resources
of later decades.

The four district schools operating within the settlement at the start
of the decade doubled in number before its close, but their enrollment
increased much more rapidly. Already in 1821 Gates Districts 2 and 10
In Rochester numbered 190 and 75 scholars respectively, while east of
the river Brighton Districts 4 and 8 reported 137 and 78 children in
East Rochester and Carthage. 93 These would have been large enroll
ments indeed for the one-room schools of the day had all sought to
attend each of the three or four terms offered during the year. By 1827
when the children of school age within the village were approaching the
two thousand mark, the eight or ten district schools were luckily supple
mented by a similar array of private institutions, yet the educational
achievements remained far from satisfactory. 94

Gates District Number 2 (to be renamed Rochester Number i in
1835) early encountered a serious problem of overcrowding. Though
the trustees were instructed by a district meeting in May, 1820, to
enlarge the building, no authority to raise the necessary fund was
granted. When an adjourned meeting reconsidered the problem and
voted instead that an additional room should be rented, again no funds
were provided, so that a third meeting was necessary before a $20
assessment was voted for this purpose. The trustees were authorized to
admit scholars unable to pay tuition as long as the payments collected
from the others would meet the expense of hiring the two teachers. 95

A popular educational reform of the day promised for a time to solve
Rochester s problems. The Lancastrian School Society of New York
City had recently opened a large school where each teacher supervised
a dozen or so student-monitors engaged in training two hundred or
more pupils. The opportunity to provide schooling to all children with
great economy hi teachers salaries appealed to the advocates of better
school facilities who met at Ensworth s tavern to discuss the pro
posal. 96 Yet a charter for such a society, incorporating Gates Districts

93 Telegraph, Dec. 28, 1819.

93 "Common School Returns from the Towns of Gates and Brighton for
1820/21," MS, N. Y. State Library, photostat copies, Roch. Pub. Library.

94 Rochester in 1827, pp. no, 138; Assembly Journal (1824), Appendix A, pp.
10-11; Journal (1825), Appendix B, p. n.

95 "Records of Gates School District No. 2" (1820-1847), May 6, Sept. 29, Oct.
9, 1820, MS, Roch. Hist. Soc.

96 Telegraph, Sept. 26, Oct. 31, Nov. 7, 1820; Album, Jan. 16, 182-1.

ORGANIZATION OF THE BOOM TOWN 121

2 and 10 and Brighton Number 4 as a union school, though submitted
to the legislature by Colonel Rochester in 1821, failed of adoption, and
the first attempt to unify the educational facilities of Rochester came
to naught. 07

Blocked in that direction, Gates District Number 2 faced increas
ingly difficult problems. The tax voted in 1824 rose to $100, half of it
earmarked for building repairs and a stove. The teacher, now aided by
a regular assistant, shared the niggardly state funds which supplemented
the tuition fees paid by some of the pupils. Overcrowding became more
critical, and though a resolution favoring a new building was lost in
1826 when a division of the district was proposed, the relief afforded
by that action a year later proved only temporary. So serious was the
wear and tear on the flimsy structure that the trustees determined in
1826 to restrict its use to school purposes. Several years rolled by before
the problem was forthrightly attacked. 98

^

The Influx of settlers brought a group of young men eager to serve
for a season or two as village schoolmasters. When their services were
not required in the district schools, the more energetic established
private schools, several of which flourished for successive years. None
of the first crop survived the twenties, yet for a time they provided
much of the elementary and all of the secondary education available
in the village.

Late in 1818 the pioneer "female academy" of Rochester opened on
Mill (Exchange) Street, a short step from Colonel Rochester s home
stead, with Miss Maria Allyn as sole instructor. The girls enrolled gave
such a creditable account of themselves at quarterly public examinations
that the school enjoyed a ready patronage for several years." Appar
ently better times had arrived for many of the villagers, enabling them
to pay the fees of five dollars each term. Thus in 1820 Hamlet Scrantom,
with his boys apprenticed to various local tradesmen, not only decided
against keeping boarders that summer, but sent Hannah and Jane to
the academy. Colonel Rochester s youngest daughter, Cornelia, likewise
enrolled. 100

It is doubtful whether Miss Allyn s academy merited such a designa-

97 "Bill to Incorporate a Lancastrian School in Rochester," MS ; Col. Rochester
to Abelard Reynolds, Jan. 24, Feb. 7, 1821, Rochester Letters.

98 Brighton District No. 2, "Record Book," May i, Oct. 30, 1824, May 6, 1826,
MS, Roch. Hist. Soc.; A. Laura McGregor, "The Early History of the Rochester
Public Schools," R. H. S., Pub., XVII, 37-41.

"William F. Peck, Semi-Centennial History of Rochester (Syracuse, 1884), pp.
299-300; Telegraph, Mar. 30, Aug. 10, 18-19; Aug. 29, 1820; Apr. 2, 1822.

100 Hamlet Scrantom to his father, July 8, 1820, Samson Note Book, IX, Roch.
Hist. Soc.; Nathaniel Rochester s receipt for $5 paid for Cornelia, one term under
Maria Allyn, Aug. 4, 1819, Rochester Letters.

122 THE WATER-POWER CITY

tion, but facilities for the higher instruction of young men appeared
during the fall of 1820. The Telegraph welcomed the school of Mr.
Forman as offering "the higher branches of education/ 7 adding that "the
want of a school of this description has long been felt in this neighbor
hood." 1M An advertisement announced courses in Hebrew, Greek, Latin,
French, English, philosophy, astronomy, arithmetic, and geography, as
weH as reading and writing. 102 Two additional teachers, P. P. Fairchild
and Thomas A. Filer, were associated with this school. Evidently the
demand of tradesmen for clerks and apprentices still attracted the older
boys of the village into vocational channels, for nothing further is heard
of Mr. Forman, while Fairchild and Filer soon shifted into the more
promising field of select schools for girls. 103

Other ventures followed in quick succession. A graduate of Middle-
bury College selected Rochester for a grammar school in i82i, 10 * two
years before the Quaker schoolteacher, Silas Cornell, arrived with a pair
of globes and a complete set of maps of the world. 105 In 1825 the
Reverend Comfort Williams offered to give college preparatory lessons
in his home. 106 Writing academies for adults ran frequent advertise
ments, 107 as did evening schools ready to accommodate those desiring
lessons in fencing, the use of the rifle, surveying, architecture, music
and dancing. 108

The failure of most of these private schools to continue active beyond
a few months did not result from a lack of children of school age, but
from the inability of the majority of parents to pay the fees. 109 The
continued inflow of settlers and the arrival of the families of the canal
builders increased the number of children unable to pay even the modest
rates demanded by the district schools. To meet this situation, several
young matrons of the village joined early in 1821 to open a charity

101 Telegraph, Aug. 8, 1820.

102 Telegraph, Aug. 8, 1820.

^Telegraph, Dec. 5, 1820, Apr. 23, May 21, 1822, Dec. 23, 1823. Filer is listed
as a teacher as late as 1827 in the first village Directory. Cornelia and Louisa
Rochester attended this school in 1821 and 1822, paying $3 for tuition each quarter
and $o cents for wood for the season. Nathaniel Rochester, receipt, Rochester
Letters.

104 Telegraph, Aug. 7, 1821.

105 Telegraph, Nov. n, 1823.

106 Tekgraph, Mar. 8, 1825.

107 Telegraph, Apr. 2, 1822; Dec. 23, 1823; Dec. 28, 1824.

108 Telegraph, Jan. 20, Nov. 23, 1824; Monroe Republican, Oct. 4, 1825.

109 Peck, Semi-Centennial History, pp. 300-314. George S. Riley, author of the
chapter on Rochester schools, lists many school teachers as active here between
1818 and 1830, but the names of at least a score of them do not appear in any
of the Directories. Most of them were young ladies whose energies were no doubt
soon diverted into the home. Only a few names reappear as school teachers in
successive Directories:; most persistent were Thomas Filer, Zeenas Freeman, Mrs.
Darrow, and Mrs. Emily Hotchkiss.

ORGANIZATION OF THE BOOM TOWN 123

school in which they proposed to take turn about as instructors. 110 Their
success during the first year was so encouraging that the ladies organized
a Female Charitable Society to carry on the school and other services
designed to ameliorate the condition of the town s poor. The school soon
acquired regular teachers and moved to North Washington Street,
where it attracted fifty or sixty indigent children each season. 111

A similar attempt to extend educational rudiments to poor children,
especially those forced to labor during the week, gave rise to the Sabbath
school movement, which started locally with a class numbering thirty
youngsters who gathered in the chapel on Sunday afternoons during the
warm season of 1818. The project resumed the next summer, and again
in 1820, when three classes were held in the district schoolhouses. A
total of two hundred scholars assembled that August for the first Sab
bath school graduation service held in the village. 112 Four such schools
operated in 1822, providing instruction in reading and writing to over
three hundred pupils on a non-sectarian basis. But the construction of
churches by the various denominations soon supplied more congenial
meeting places, and the non-sectarian character of these schools quickly
disappeared. 113

Still unsolved was the problem of providing more advanced instruc
tion. The Directory of 1827 lamented the absence of an "institution of
learning ... an edifice built for science." It seemed humiliating no
doubt to describe the Monroe Academy at Henrietta, ten miles south
of Rochester, as the leading school in the county. 114 Canandaigua and
Geneva academies or schools farther east were the resort of the more
favored young men. Colonel Rochester s youngest son, Henry, spent
three years at Geneva Academy, where he first met Isaac R. Elwood
and other lads destined to head for Rochester after graduation. 115
While several leading Rochesterians responded to an appeal from the
Geneva Academy for financial support, 116 the village, in the opinion of
the first Directory, should plant its own "academic grove" and thus
supply a proper "retreat for the muses" within the village limits. 117

Agitation for a local academy rapidly gained ground. The assistance

110 Esther Maria Ward Chapin, "Diaries and Letters," pp. ii8L, typed copy,
Roch. Hist. Soc.

111 Amy H. Croughton, "The Rochester Female Charitable Society," R. H. $.,
Pub., IX, 68-69.

112 Rochester Gazette, May 30, Aug. 15, 1820.

113 Telegraph, June 2$, 1825 ; "A History of the Sabhath Schools of Rochester,"
The Penny Preacher, Nov. 13, 1842.

114 Rochester Directory (1827), p. 137.

115 "Recollections of Henry E. Rochester," Harris Papers, No. 85, Roch. Hist.
Soc.; Blake McKelvey, "On the Educational Frontier," R. H, S., Pub., XVH, -13-16.

Album, Feb. 14, Mar. 7, 1826.
117 Rochester Directory (1827), p. 137.

i2 4 THE WATER-POWER CITY

offered by the state Regents provided encouragement. 118 Accordingly
in 1827 the trustees of Brighton Districts 4 and 14 asked permission
to incorporate a union school, and this time the legislature readily gave
its consent. Shortly after a three-story building was completed at a cost
of $7500 on a lot secured from Enos Stone, 119 Professor S. D. Moore
opened the school with forty scholars in August, 1828, attracting an
enrollment of two hundred by the end of the quarter. Though tuition
charges ranged between one and five dollars per quarter, the attendance
grew to an average of three hundred for the second term. 120 By the
close of its first full year the High School, as it was proudly named,
was able to report a larger total number of students than any of the
fifty-four other academies in the state. Most of this enrollment was in
the elementary division, representing a swollen district school conducted
on the monitorial system, but at least thirty-seven were classed as
academy students, which was an encouraging start, and the Regents
granted the school $240.89 to assist in providing suitable instruction. 121

<

If some Rochesterians in the twenties desired an "academic grove"
for the village youth, others urged facilities for the intellectual life of
adults. Two of the book stores maintained by local printers provided
circulating libraries, while the occasional lists of books advertised for
sale or circulation indicated a plentiful supply, particularly under the
category of "Religion and Morality." 122 A debating society, which met
regularly once a week in Filer s school room during the winter of
1820-21, probably disappeared before Dr. Levi Ward called interested
citizens together at the Mansion House in the spring of 1822 to form
the Rochester Library Company. 123 That library was apparently soon
taken over by the book store of E. F. Marshall, where it accommodated
members able to subscribe five dollars a year, but a "Forum where
there is much debating & spouting, and which is more respectable than
the old debating society" continued for a time. 124 The interest aroused
at a special series of chemistry lectures given by Professor Amos Eaton
of the Troy Polytechnic Institute in the fall of 1826 prompted the
"Chemical Class," as it was called, to collect funds for a permanent
library. Again Dr. Ward played an active part in the organization of

118 Album, Aug. 22, 1826.

119 N. Y. Laws of 1827, ch. 70.

120 Observer, Feb. 27, 1829.

121 N. Y. State Regents Reports, 1829 and 1830, see tables.

^Telegraph, Sept-Oct, 1818; June i, 1819; Apr. 2, 9, 1822; Nov. 26, 1823.

123 Telegraph, Dec. 5, 1820; Apr. 2, 1822; Monroe County Clerk s "Miscellaneous
Records," I, 53.

^EKsabeth Spencer to Joseph Spencer, Rochester, Jan. 30, 1823, Elisabeth
Selden Spencer Eaton Letters, courtesy of Mrs. Elizabeth Selden Rogers, New York
City.

ORGANIZATION OF THE BOOM TOWN 125

the resulting Franklin Institute, which enrolled about seventy members
and collected three hundred volumes. 125

Since the facilities of these early libraries belonged to those able to
pay the prescribed dues, many readers were excluded. Young Henry
O Reilly, who had enjoyed the use of a Mechanics Library in New York
City a few years before, took the initiative in forming an Apprentice s
Library in 1828 designed to serve the increasing number of young men
of that class in the village. The new organization was promptly invited
to share the room of the Franklin Institute, located at that time in the
Court House, and the Reverend Joseph Penney welcomed the joint
membership at the dedication of the new room in December, 1828,
with an appropriate address on "Knowledge is Power." 128

Before the Franklin Institute was split asunder by the furor of the
Antimasonic controversy it performed another service for the village by
ordering a portrait of DeWitt Clinton, the great patron of the canal,
to be painted by George Catlin in New York. A most unfortunate acci
dent marred this civic gesture when the artist s younger brother, who
brought the painting to Rochester, was seized by cramps and drowned
while swimming in the river below the falls, 127

Earlier evidences of artistic interests in the village included exhibits
by visiting painters at local taverns, while several portraitists advertised
their services. 128 A studio was maintained for a year or two by a "por
trait and ornamental" painter, Daniel Steele, who shortly found himself
arraigned before the local court as a common cheat. 129 The most influen
tial local artist, J. L. D. Mathies, maintained a gallery in conjunction
with William Page of New York for several months in the mid-twenties.
Mathies operated a soda fountain, sold musical instruments and provi
sions, and finally became a tavern keeper, but in the midst of his varied
activities he was ever ready to bring out his palette when occasion
offered. His most noteworthy achievement was a portrait of the aging
chieftain, Red Jacket. It was especially fitting, now that the tribesmen
had removed from their last settlements within the county, 130 that a

^Telegraph, Aug. 18, 1826; Advertiser, Oct. 25, 1826; Blake McKelvey,
"Early Library Developments In and Around Rochester," R. H. S., Pub., XVI,
20-29; "Amos Eaton," Dictionary of American Biography, V, 605-606.

^Advertiser, Oct. 28, Dec. 3, 5, 1828.

127 Clifford M. Ulp, "Art and Artists in Rochester," R. H. S., Pub., XIV, 29-30;
Observer, Sept. 26, 1828; National Cyclopedia of American Biography, III, 270.

128 Telegraph, Dec. 10, 1822; Dec. 23, 1823; Oct. 12, 1824; Monroe Republican,
Mar. 7, 1826. Messrs. M Laughlin, Harding, Cable, and Ladd were among the
early visiting artists.

^Monroe Republican, Aug. i, 1826; Advertiser, July 18, 1828; Democrat,
Oct. 2o r 1840.

lao William H. Samson s notes on the "Red Jacket" portrait, MSS, Roch. Hist.
Soc.; Harris Papers, No, 65 A. The last Indian community in the county resided
on the Sutton farm until the close of the twenties.

126 THE WATER-POWER CITY

portrait of their great orator should for many years grace the parlor
of the Clinton (or Mansion) House. Indeed, that tavern, at least during
the proprietorship of its artist-manager, provided a favorite resort for
visiting artists. 131

DENOMINATIONAL RIVALRIES

The community acted much more promptly and energetically in the
development of its religious institutions. In place of the one modest
frame church of 1818, the village ten years later boasted three hand
some stone edifices and two of brick as well as three frame churches in
temporary service, while two new stone buildings were already under
construction. This considerable material progress manifested in a sig
nificant way the community s determination to establish its beliefs and
traditions on a solid footing. The diversity of institutions likewise dis
played a keen rivalry between and within the various sects, reflecting
the community s economic and cultural cleavages. Though mutual ob
jectives tended to draw the various church leaders together, differences
in temperament and method frequently thrust them apart. Not until the
end of the decade were these emotional powers redirected so as to
become powerful driving forces behind a series of contemporary reform
movements.

For several years the First Presbyterian Church was the dominant
religious organization. Its simple frame building on Carroll Street cor
dially sheltered other church societies as well as the first Sabbath school
and an occasional concert. 132 The Reverend Comfort Williams, the only
resident pastor in the settlement until December, 1820, with a Yale and
Andover training, ranked as one of the educated and respected clerics
of western New York. 133 The congregation, growing from the sixteen
founders of 1815 to ninety in 1821, included many of the more forceful
of the increasing number of Yankee residents: Josiah Bissell, the Ely
brothers, Dr. Frederick Backus, Moses Chapin, Dr. Levi Ward, and
Everard Peck among others.

But the strong personalities of these men, stimulated by the dynamic
community of which they were a part, made it increasingly difficult for
them to worship in the same church. A few withdrew in 1818 to help
found the Brighton Congregational Church, and the following year
several others joined with the settlers at the lower falls to form the
Carthage Presbyterian Society. Before the next division, the pastor him-

131 Ulp, "Art and Artists in Rochester," pp. 30-31, 40; Telegraph, June 10, 1823;
July 5, 1825; Rochester Republican, July 4, 1826, Feb. 9, 1830; Advertiser, Dec.
13, 1828; July 27, 1830.

132 Charles M. Robinson, First Church Chronicles: 1815-1915 (Rochester, 1915),
PP. 31-33.

^Robinson, pp. 21-41; [Charles M. Williams], The Reverend Comfort Wil-
Uams: First Settled Pastor in Rochester (Rochester, 1910).

ORGANIZATION OF THE BOOM TOWN 127

self, disturbed over disputes witMn Ms flock, tendered Ms resignation
and retired to manage a small subdivision on the southeastern outskirts
of the village. 134

The difficulties within the First Church sprang in part from the
attempt to make Congregationalists into Presbyterians. A similar inter
nal struggle marked the development of most churches of these closely
allied sects on the New York frontier proving that the famous Plan
of Union had not produced a complete union in spirit. 135 Nevertheless
the strength of First Church was maintained and enhanced by the grow
ing community. Its second pastor, the Reverend Joseph Penney, with a
warm Scotch-Irish heart and a keen intellect trained at Dublin and
Glasgow, was able to lead the congregation forward to the task of
building a spacious stone church on a central plot back of the Court
House. 136 For several years after its completion the new church re
mained the most pretentious structure of its kind in the town, having
cost, including an elaborate heating equipment, nearly $16,000.

At least one other church enjoyed rapid progress. Since both the
Yorkers and the Southerners were Episcopal in tradition, Colonel
Rochester saw to it that the church lot set aside by the proprietors
went to this group. A frame structure was accordingly erected in 1820
on Fitzhugh Street near the district school, facing the public square
where the Court House was soon to be constructed. The Reverend
Francis H. Cuming 137 became the first settled pastor, and a thriving
congregation following Low Church ritual enrolled, in addition to the
numerous Rochester clan, such outstanding villagers as Elisha Johnson,
Silas O. Smith, Enos Stone, John Mastick, Samuel J. Andrews, and
William Atkinson. A tower capped with a spire and equipped with the
first bell in the village added a touch of charm to the community. 138
St. Luke s congregation soon felt strong enough to erect a handsome
Gothic edifice built of stone at a cost of $10,000. Hamlet Scrantom
proudly assumed the duties of sexton shortly after the new building
was occupied in the fall of 182 s. 130

134 Rev. Orlo J. Price, "One Hundred Years of Protestantism in Rochester,"
R. H. S., Pub., XII, 247-249; Robinson, First Church Chronicles, pp. 30-42.

135 James H. Dill, Congregationalism in Western New York: Its Rise, Decline
and Revival (Rochester, 1859), pp. 5-10; James H. Hotchkin, A History of the
Purchase and Settlement of Western New York and of the Rise, Progress and
Present State of the Presbyterian Church in that Section (New York, 1848), pp.

98-TC2O.

136 Robinson, First Church Chronicles, pp. 42-61; Price, "Protestantism in
Rochester," pp. 248-249; Directory (1827), pp. 125-126; Nat. Cy. Am. Biog., VII,
406.

137 Annah B. Yates Scrapbook, p. 175; Rev. Henry Anstice, Annals of St. Luke s
Church (Rochester, 1883), pp. 11-19.

138 Philip Stansbury, Pedestrian Tour . . . in North America, p. 91.

138 Rev, Henry Anstice, Centennial Annals of St, Luke s Church: 1817-1017

128 THE WATER-POWER CITY

While these two sects dominated the village, several others struggled
for a footing. The first to secure a house of its own was the Friends*
Society, whose simple frame meeting house on Fitzhugh Street, com
pleted in 1822, served as the headquarters for several Quaker groups
in the county, numbering approximately six hundred by 1828, nearly
half of them within the village. 140 A local Catholic society, organized in
1820 as the third Roman Catholic church in the western part of the
state, soon purchased a lot at the corner of Platt and Frank Streets,
where in 1823 a modest chapel appeared, forerunner of St. Patrick s
Cathedral. Service was provided occasionally by the Reverend Patrick
Kelly of Auburn until a local priest arrived and put up temporarily at
the Mansion House. 141

The Methodists and the Baptists, in spite of a slow start, enjoyed
a vigorous growth toward the end of the decade. After six years of
worship in the Court House or one of the school buildings, a Wesleyan
society, incorporated in 1820, succeeded in erecting a small brick church
east of the river. Abelard Reynolds became an outstanding member,
and the rapid influx of settlers moving west from the back country of
New England and from the north country in New York swelled its
congregation until expansion appeared necessary. 142 The first attempts of
the Baptists to support a resident pastor proved discouraging, but after
several years boarding around in public or private halls their society
acquired temporary possession of the old frame church on Carroll
Street 143

The leaders of these several denominations made frequent efforts to
work together when mutual interests were involved. The early Sabbath
school movement, the Female Charitable Society, the local temperance
and missionary societies, and the Bible Society all began as cooperative
ventures, though sectarian rivalries ultimately caused duplication in
most of these activities. 14 * Even after the Sunday schools became sec
tarian, a Monroe County Sabbath School Union, organized in 1825,
successfully brought most of the leaders and many of the scholars to
gether on special occasions. Thus, 700 scholars gathered on Johnson s

(Rochester, 1917), pp. 16-20; Price, "Protestantism in Rochester," pp. 250-253;
Rev. R. Bethel Claxton, Parish Memories of Forty Years (Rochester, 1860) ;
Hamlet Scrantom, Journal, MS, Roch. Hist. Soc.

140 John Cox, Jr. and P. E. Clapp, "Quakers in Rochester and Monroe County,"
R. H. S., Pub,, XIV, 97-99; Price, "Protestantism in Rochester," p. 253.

141 Rev. F. J. Zwierlein, "One Hundred Years of Catholicism in Rochester,"
R H. S. r Pub., XIH, 191-194.

142 Price, "Protestantism in Rochester," p. 256. Rev. D. W. C. Huntington,
"Historical Sermon, Early Rochester Methodists," Evening Express, Dec. i, 1877.

143 Price, pp. 254-255; Rev. A. H. Strong, "Historical Sketch," Centennial
Celebration, First Baptist Church: 1818-1018 (Rochester, 1918), pp. 6-13.

144 Henry O Reilly, Sketches of Rochester, pp. 292-309.

ORGANIZATION OF THE BOOM TOWN 129

(Washington) Square and marched across the aqueduct to First Church
for graduation exercises on October 4, 1826. This gathering comprised,
however, only a portion of the village membership of 910, while the 76
schools in the county reported a total of 3030 scholars that year. 145

The Monroe County Bible Society proved the most successful of the
other mutual enterprises of the twenties. After its first organization at
Ellsworth s tavern in 1821., the society enlisted energetic support from
most of the churches., though a decision to purchase sixty Bibles for
distribution to local Catholic families may have caused some unre
corded friction. The distribution program was taken up with vigor in
1825 when Elder Josiah Bissell became agent. A survey of families
lacking Bibles within the county , revealing that 1200 Bibles were
needed,, spurred the collection of funds for their purchase. The agent s
report for the year showed a total of 2700 Bibles, Testaments, and
tracts sold or given away that season. Three years later a second drive
undertook to place the Word of God in every home in the county. 146

^

The Bible furnished a common heritage, but the variations in its
interpretation were almost as numerous among the villagers as among
Eastern theologians whence indeed most of them came. The battle for
religious dominance in western New York had broken into the open at
Canandaigua a few years before, with the Reverend Henry U. Onder-
donk defending High Church principles against the attack of a neigh
boring Presbyterian divine. 147 Onderdonk had made two early attempts
to establish clergymen of his persuasion at Rochester, but the first,
receiving little encouragement at the falls, had moved on to Buffalo
and the other to Detroit. By the time Rochester was ready for an
Episcopal clergyman, Onderdonk had left for New York, and a Low
Churchman received the call. Despite his more moderate ritualism, the
Reverend Francis Cuming soon found himself in frequent and open
disagreement with his Presbyterian neighbors. 148

The struggle of the Presbyterian and Episcopal societies for leadership
in the village continued throughout most of the decade. Each chose a
central site near the Court House and hastened to erect a handsome
stone edifice; it was perhaps unfortunate that the two buildings should
practically face each other across Fitzhugh Street, Each must have its
belfry, but the Christopher Wren spire on First Church overshadowed

145 Monroe County Sunday School Union, Second Report (Rochester, 1826) ;
The Penny Preacher (Rochester, 1842), pp. 75-76.

146 "Monroe County Bible Society Record Book," 1821-1881, MS, Roch. Hist.
Soc.; American Bible Society, Ninth Report (New York, 1825), pp. 24, 55-58;
Telegraph, Apr. 10, 1821; Feb. 15, Mar. 29, 1825; Observer, Apr. 28, 1827.

14T Henry U. Onderdonk, An Appeal To the Religious Public (Canandaigua,
1818).

148 Anstice, Annals of St. Luke s Church, pp. 7-20.

130 THE WATER-POWER CITY

the square Gothic tower across the street. If the Presbyterians erected
the larger edifice and bedecked it with a tower clock (though the works
were not installed for some time), St. Luke s provided the first organ
in town. 149 As new residents were eagerly approached by both groups,
accusations of proselytism flew back and forth.

Possibly a half-conscious reluctance to see Rochester overburdened
with institutions, when one or two had always sufficed in villages back
east, helped to sharpen local sectarian rivalries. Fears of inadequate
support proved illusory, however. The Presbyterians were strengthened
by a constant stream of Yankees from Connecticut and western Massa
chusetts, and while many newcomers, having shed their sectarian ties
on leaving home, remained indifferent, others responded to the emo
tional appeals of Methodist and Baptist camp meetings. 150 The Episco
palians, accustomed to leadership in New York State, felt perturbed
over the more rapid advance of others. The Reverend Francis Cuming
of St. Luke s proved especially sensitive to criticism from the Presby
terians across the street. Thus an allusion to "churchmen" who appeal to
"divine right ... to demonstrate the truths of their beliefs" prompted
the young rector to stalk out of his neighbor s church during the dedica
tion of the new building. 15 - 1

A heated altercation in pamphlet form between the rival parsons
provided release to pent-up feelings. Each side doubtless enjoyed its
theological vindication. What fault can one find, asked the Presby
terian divine, in a doctrine that refuses to substitute means for the end
and gives attention to the primary end of rendering "men who are
beings prone to sin and subject to misery, good that they may be
Happy"; the Yankee, at least, felt confident of ultimate salvation "by
grace through faith." 152 But, replied the Yorker across the street, "what
can be more gratifying to the pious soul than to enter the sanctuary
and behold . . . both minister t and people approaching the throne of
grace" through a devout performance of the sacraments together, for
since the latter works are the correct means to the end of salvation,
what better counsel than to give them dutiful attention? 153

14fi Anstice, Annals, pp. 21-24; Robinson, First Church Chronicles, pp. 50-54.

150 David M. Ludlum, Social Ferment in Vermont: 1791-1850 (New York,
1939) > PP- 3-^2. Not all Yankees were Congregationalists, and in the back country
of Vermont and other New England states from which so many of the Genesee
settlers came, a "Puritan Counter-Reformation," led by Baptist, Methodist, and
UniversaMst, as well as Congregationalist parsons, had been battling against a
strong element of agnosticism since the early years of the century.

1KL Rev. Joseph Penney, Sermon Preached at the Opening of the New Presby
terian Church in Rochester, October 28, 1824 (Rochester, 1824) ; Rev. Francis H.
Cuming, A Note Addressed to the Reverend Joseph Penney (Rochester, 1824).

ic2 Penney^ Sermon, pp. 3, 9.

153 Rev. Francis H. Cuming, The Church Perfect and Entire (Canandaigua,
1825), pp. 10, 19.

ORGANIZATION OF THE BOOM TOWN 131

With the current straggle over the bank and that between the Repub
licans and the People s party splitting the community on almost the
same lines, it must have been a relief to have all differences aired at
once. Possibly it was at this time, when feelings were at their height,
that "the minister across the way" was described from one pulpit as
"no other than the Evil Spirit himself wrapped up in a cloak." 1M But
while such stories lingered on in tavern gossip, the mutual interests of
these two dominant churches soon brought them into closer collabora
tion. Indeed, the Reverend Cuming himself attracted criticism the next
summer from a parishioner who wrote with mild indignation to his
wife:

I was at his Church this evening and a real Presbyterian sermon he gave
us it was an hour long and offered Salvation on such terms as few people
of sense would accept of there is no use in Clergymen requiring more of
us than the God of Nature has endowed us with abilities to perform. 155

There were, it seemed, many in the village, both among the respecta
ble and among those thronging the groceries and the circus booths, who
did not choose salvation on the terms then offered. Incomplete church
enrollments for 1827 claimed less than half the 1664 families found
in the village late that year. 156 Critics and disciples of Tom Paine packed
the Court House in 1828 to hear Benjamin Offen, the New York shoe
maker-deist, debate a local Methodist parson, but several years passed
before a society was formed. 157 The great majority were simply not
concerned with the debate between faith and works. Nor were they
much disturbed over the damnation of infant souls, although a small
monthly paper, issued for a brief season, repeatedly attacked that tenet
and everlasting punishment. 156 The argument brought a prompt reply, 159
and indeed there was no escape from the theological dilemmas of the
day, as an occasional Universalist, Free Will Baptist, or Hicksite

164 Carl David Arfwedson, The United States and Canada in 1832, 1833, and
1834 (London, 1834), p. 305. Arfwedson, a Swedish traveler, recounts several un
savory tales of the Presbyterians of Rochester, where he found them the dominant
sect, but they atppear to have been reported to him by a former communicant.

155 Dr. Anson Colman to his wife, Rochester, July 17, 1825, Colman Letters,
MSS, Univ. Rochester.

156 St Luke s had 113 families and First Presbyterian, by far the largest, 278,
while the Baptists numbered 100 and probably none of the others greatly exceeded
the last figure. Claxton, Parish Memories, p. 12; Robinson, First Church
Chronicles, p. 61; Centennial Celebration, First Baptist Church, p. 7.

15T Price, "Protestantism in Rochester," p. 242 ; Democrat, Feb. 6, 1835 5 Albert
Post, Popular Freethought in America, 1825-1850 (New York, 1943), pp. 148-149.

158 The Testimony of Jesus Christ and a Study of Divinity, June, i825-April,
1826.

159 Rev. J. Sellon, Sermons on the Doctrine of Everlasting Punishment (Can-
andaigua, 1828).

i 3 2 THE WATER-POWER CITY

Quaker drifted into the settlement long enough to deliver a sermon
or two. 160 Rumors were current of a strange new prophet, Joseph Smith,
who had lately appeared a few miles east at Palmyra. 161 But all this
disputation did not seem vitally related to the affairs of the thriving
town.

Meanwhile, new theological disputes appeared, engendering sufficient
explosive energy, coupled with other factors, to split the two dominant
church societies and lead to the establishment of offspring congregations.
The sermon of a young Andover student, the Reverend Joel Parker,
delivered in the Presbyterian church on the merits of evangelical evi
dences of salvation stimulated the revolt led by Elder Bissell against
Penney s more orthodox Calvinism. The issue had been raised by reports
of the "shower of refreshing" descending upon the churches of Oneida
as a result of the Finney revivals there in 1824 and 1825. Both Parker
and Bissell, as spiritual kinsmen of the great revivalist who was creating
dissension among theologians in the East, helped to make Rochester a
crucial battleground in the struggle between Old and New School Pres-
byterianism. The split in the Presbyterian fold supplied the first evi
dence of that struggle in Rochester. 162

The seceders, however, animated by sectional as well as doctrinal
differences, could not agree on a location for their new church home.
After meeting for a time in the old frame building, one faction chose a
site on Fitzhugh Street opposite the Quaker Meeting house, while
Bissell and Ely, whose land holdings lay east of the river, led another
group to a site on (East) Main Street. 163 During the later years of the
decade, while the second and third Presbyterian societies were busily
engaged in constructing their respective brick and stone edifices, a
similar offshoot occurred from the Episcopal society. Apparently the
split, led by S. J. Andrews, William Atkinson, E. B. Strong, Elisha
Johnson, and other east-siders, was based less on High Church-Low
Church differences than on sectional and personal rivalries. The first
choice of the new group, the brilliant Low Churchman, Charles P. Mcll-
vaine, was bitterly attacked in a letter from the Reverend Henry
Onderdonk in New York as willing to work closely with the Presby-

160 Advertiser, Sept. 10, 1829; Price, "Protestantism in Rochester," pp. 253-254,
258, 272; Tallcut Patching, A Religious Convincement and Plea (Rochester, .1843).
This autobiographical account of a troubled soul which wandered from one belief
to another while its distraught owner sought his living in various parts of western
New York after 1815 throws much light on the theological dilemmas of the day.

161 Gem, Sept. 5, 1829, Dec. 25, 1830; Advertiser, Apr. 2, 1830; T. Hamilton,
Men and Manners in America (Philadelphia, 1833), pp. 264-265.

162 Gilbert H. Barnes, The, AntisUvery Impulse: 1830-1844 (New York, 1933),
PP. 3-io ; "Joel Parker," D. A. B., XW, 231.

16S Price, "Protestantism in Rochester," pp. 249-250; G. B. F. Hallock and
Maude, Motley, A Living Church (Rochester, 1925), pp. 1-13.

ORGANIZATION OF THE BOOM TOWN 133

terians. 1 * 4 Onderdonk had his way with the bishop, in spite of the
evident preferences of the vestry of newly organized St. Paul s, for the
church erected in 1829 incorporated High Church ritual in its ambitious
Gothic structure, which boasted the tallest spire in western New York, 165

*

These bitterly resented defections had nevertheless several fortunate
results. The rapid growth of the town presented opportunities for the
expansion of church memberships which the existing institutions, despite
the ambitious proportions of their buildings, would not have been able
to meet. Moreover, the sharp rivalry between St. Luke s and First
Presbyterian softened and gradually disappeared as the number of
strong churches increased and other issues surged to the fore. Old de
nominational rivals, beginning to feel a new kinship, gave attention to
their mutual interests as church people. Earlier professions of tolerance
gained reality, at least within the recognized Protestant fold, as the
churches turned their guns on the unregenerate members of the com
munity, whose activities were proving a mortification to the more
respectable elements.

Thus Rochester church folk, abandoning their village quarrels and
striding forward to face the problems of a thriving market town, sought
to remake that town in the traditional village image. The fervor engen
dered by the Finney revivals in central New York had repercussions in
Rochester, spurring renewed attacks on the theater and the circus, the
groceries and the billiard rooms, and "other mirthful enterprises" where
the young lose "the pure and solid enjoyments that mingle with a life
of conformity to reason and conscience, aided by the light of piety and
religion." 166 Temperance advocates appeared, impelling the Ontario
Presbytery, which included the Rochester churches, to adopt a total
abstinence resolution in 1827 despite strong opposition from several
ministers who "desired to treat their friends politely." 167

Most determined was the campaign for a quiet observance of the
Sabbath. The issue became increasingly apparent after the opening of
the canal (indeed the great revival which swept across upstate New York
during the late twenties had some of the characteristics of a counter-
reformation to the social effects of the commercial revolution brought
by Clinton s big ditch), yet local agitation for a law to close the locks
on Sunday, though widely supported throughout the state, especially by
those stirred to action by the great revival, gained little headway in

164 [Charles P. Mcllvaine], Reverend Mr. Mcllvaine in Answer to Reverend
Henry U. Onderdonk (New York, 1828) ; D. A. B., XII, 64.

165 William B. Knox to L. C. Paine, Rochester, Aug. 3, 1829, Autograph Letters,
Roch. Hist. Soc.

166 Rev. Joseph Penney, The House of Mirth (Rochester, 1830) , pp. 14-15 ;
Barnes, Antislavery Impulse, p. 7.

167 U. P. Hedrick, History of Agriculture in New York, p. 285.

i 34 THE WATER-POWER CITY

the legislature. 1 * 8 Similar agitation to stop the mails on that day met
a like fate and aroused indignant opposition in Rochester. A group call
ing themselves the Friends of a Free and Liberal Conscience, under the
leadership of the Hicksite Quaker, E. F. Marshall, and the High Church
man, S. G. Andrews, met in Christopher s long room during 1828, and
voted four hundred strong against such "fanatical" measures.* 69 Never
theless, local ordinances supplied some of the desired regulations, such
as prohibitions against the blowing of boat horns and the transaction of
commercial affairs on the Sabbath, though the enforcement of these
rules proved difficult. 170

Forthright efforts to secure a correct observance of the Sabbath
appeared when Elder Bissell and several Rochester and Auburn asso
ciates organized a six-day stage company. Boldly incurring an expense
of $60,000, these men equipped their line with new stages and fresh
horses, and engaged reliable and temperate drivers who undertook to
keep a schedule of stops between Albany and Buffalo by way of Roches
ter at such speed as to make up for the day of rest. The line proved a
lively competitor to the old stage company for several years, earnestly
endeavoring to persuade all good Christians to boycott its Sabbath-
breaking rival. 171

Meanwhile the Female Charitable Society afforded increased activity
to young matrons who were finding new leisure from household duties.
Funds collected at annual charity sermons in the various churches
assisted the one-hundred-odd "benevolent ladies in ... softening the
pangs of grief, soothing the despair of affliction, assuaging the pains of
sickness, wiping the widow s eyes, and warming and educating her
orphans." Pitifully small sums they were, ranging between fifty and
seventy dollars a year, including members dues, but through the
practice of loaning "articles of clothing, bedding, etc. during periods of
sickness," the volunteer visitors, each charged with a specified district
of the town, were able to extend their friendly aid throughout the
community. 172

The "Signs of the Times," as reviewed by Joel Parker in a Thanks
giving sermon in 1828, were encouraging indeed. He saw "evidence
that the secular advantages" with which the community had been
favored "are to be sanctified by a moral influence." He rejoiced that

of the State of New York in Relation to the Erie and Champlain
Canals (Albany, 1825), II, 577-578; Assembly Journal (1825), pp. 633, 1149;
Observer, Mar. 17, 1827; July 22, 1828.

ie9 Observer, Feb. 8, 1828; Album, Feb. 12, 1828.

170 Rochester in 1827, p. 107.

171 O J ReiUy, Sketches of Rochester, p. 313 ; Album, Mar. 18, 1828 ; Josiali Bissell
to Gerrit Smith, Rochester, Apr. 28, 1830, Gerritt Smith Papers, Syracuse Uni
versity.

1TO Amy H. Croughton, "Rochester Female Charitable Society," pp. 68-71.

ORGANIZATION OF THE TOWN 133

"the increase of wealth is enabling a host of good men to devote time
& money, and influence to the advancement of sound morals & pure
religion." 17S Look, he advised Ms hearers^ at the Bible Society, the tract
societies., the missionary cause, the Sabbath schools, the temperance
societies^ and the Antimasonlc organizations. Alas, he felt it necessary to
devote a major part of Ms sermon to that last cause, thus helping to
stoke the fires of a new controversy which was rapidly disrupting the
work in Rochester of the other agencies he mentioned. Doubtless he
would not have hesitated had he realized the effects of his discourse, for
there was an intensity of conviction behind the social codes of the day
wMch brooked no compromise. Only from the resistances of an In
creasingly complex community could the citizens learn an urbane
tolerance, and in some fields it was to be a long hard lesson.

17S Joel Parker, The Signs of the Times (Rochester, 1828), pp. 6ff.

CHAPTER VI

SOCIAL AND POLITICAL UPHEAVAL
1818-1829

MOMENTUM of its growth contributed an inevitable turbulence
and disharmony to the society and politics of early Rochester.
-*- Dissimilar population elements and the boisterous life of the canal
distorted the simple village pattern of the early twenties, giving rise to
a keen struggle for leadership. Rival weekly and daily papers provided
free vent to the contending factions and helped to focus attention on
the possibility of achieving dominance through political channels. The
chance emergence of a dramatic issue in the Antimasonic controversy
disrupted earlier associations and produced a new alignment of forces.
In the resulting turmoil, Rochester (which had started the decade with
a battle for its independence) emerged as the focal point in a new po
litical movement. Unfortunate events disclosed bitter factional jealous
ies, and only with great reluctance was the necessity for accommodating
individual interests to the community s welfare recognized. Indeed, the
lesson was imperfectly mastered during this decade of the town s most
rapid growth.

VILLAGE FOLKWAYS nsr TRANSITION

The quaint New England village life of early Rochester and the
Colonel s effort to introduce Southern patriarchal features were alike
forced to retreat before the steady influx of new elements during the
mid-twenties. At times the animated life of the taverns, thronging with
out-of-town merchants and travelers, and again the commotion pro
vided by the new breed of canallers eager for diversion, threatened to
overshadow the activities of the settled villagers. But the rapid increase
of the number of energetic townsmen, whose dashing manners had
an undeniable respectability, strengthened the permanent fibers and
broadened the pattern of local society. In several respects the interests
and activities of the various elements coincided, and the community
soon found itself provided with many of the social facilities of a prosper
ous town.

During the early twenties Rochester doubtless appeared a welcome
haven to lonely migrants from New England. The town s social circle

SOCIAL AND POLITICAL UPHEAVAL 137

had not yet crystallized, and newcomers enjoyed easy access to Its

fellowship. At least one stranger described the social setting with
appreciation:

I arrived here with unfavorable prejudices; knowing as I did the sudden
growth of the place, I expected as a natural consequence, that individuals
were congregated here from every part of the U. S. with no other similarity
in their views than a determination to make money. . . . But I have been
agreeably disappointed the people are primarily from New England and they
appear to have brought with them the hospitality, the courtesy, and the
enterprise of that "much loved land." No little foolish jealousies interrupt
social intercourse or the harmony of the festive circle nor has modern
Refinement substituted cold heartless formality for confidence and good will.

The evening after I arrived there was a CotUlion party. I was invited . . .
and never have I beheld a more brilliant assemblage of ladies. Grace, dignity
and affability shone resplendent from the faces of the "fair spirits." Soon
. . . the dance exhibited the female form moving light as zephyrs with grace
and dignity in every motion. . . . The room was splendidly illuminated and
fancifully decorated with evergreens. ... I leave the village tomorrow, not
without regret. 1

A cordial welcome awaited newcomers in most new Western villages,
yet Rochester was among the first to produce such a fullness of life in
Its very first years. Canandaigua and other older towns excelled In
charm, but a spirit of wanderlust did not assure access to their es
tablished circles. In Rochester all turned out to join the sleighing on
the first favorable evenings, for which everybody had been waiting
impatiently for many dreary weeks. The number of weddings attended
by one local diarist revealed abundant jollification on that account,
while the arrival of a relation or old neighbor from the East frequently
provided occasion for festivities. 2

With promising young merchants, mechanics, clerks, law and theology
students stopping across the way, Rochester seemed almost a maiden s
paradise. 3 A young girl s autograph book, in which she collected verses
expressing the good wishes of numerous beaux and fond elders, quickly
became a recipe book in which muffins, ginger cookies, elderberry wine,
toothache remedies, and crochet patterns crowded out the poetry
apparently without destroying the lively spirits. 4 Village housewives saw
little need to break their backs when younger sisters or cousins were

only too eager to come on from the New England hills to visit the

&

1 Rochester Gazette, Jan. 2, 1820.

2 Esther Maria Ward Chapin, Diary, 1819^1823, typed copy, Roch. Hist. Soc.
3 U. S. Census (1830), p, 40. Although Rochester numbered 2351 girls under

20 years to 2119 boys, the ratio was reversed above that age with 1266 men 20
to 30 years as compared with 1009 young women, and 743 to 533 respectively
in the 30 to 40 age group.

*Miss Nabby Baldwin s Book, 1826-1832, MS, Roch. Hist. Soc.

138 THE WATER-POWER CITY

bustling town and demonstrate their domestic proficiency. If necessary,
a house girl could be engaged at one dollar a week, though there was
sure to be difficulty in keeping her beyond a few months. In the course
of a year one young matron turned out fifteen shirts, three corsets, seven
nightcaps, eight nightgowns, three petticoats, ten slips, six gowns, two
Van Dykes, one quilted bed cover, and one great coat, not to mention
numerous kerchiefs and other items. Time could still be found for an
occasional concert or lecture in addition to the regular church services
and charity society meetings; visits to a nearby relative or at the
home of a neighbor across the river would fill a day or two each week;
or a quilting bee would help pass a lonesome evening while a young
husband attended court or engaged in other affairs. 5 If the mud was
deep in the streets the full-skirted matron might have to go to the
quilting bee in a barrow, but get there she would.* "From dancing too
much," Mrs. Vought suffers "of the rheumatism occasionally," reported
the wife of Joseph Spencer, the Rochester representative at Albany in
1823. "I am afraid I [too] shall be getting dissipated," Elisabeth
Spencer added, as she decided not to attend a third concert by the Rollo
family, "great and loud singers . . . better than Miss Davis the singing
Miss from Dublin." 7

Practically every home had a garden, and the ripening of early
vegetables was eagerly awaited in the springtime. Scattered fruit trees
were in bud, beginning to yield as the decade advanced. Everard Peck
advertised a supply of garden seed at his book store, while itinerant
nurserymen peddled young sprouts, including rose bushes and grape
vines. 8 Colonel Rochester brought a trained gardener from the East to
set out a tree nursery behind his new home on Spring Street. 9 Meanwhile,
the village enjoyed the plentiful supply of fresh fruit brought in with
the loads of hay or grain from the older farms up the valley. 10

Each season had its choice delicacies and favorite activities, its special
domestic pleasures of interest to all. Possibly the calving of the faithful
milk cow gave the greatest thrill to the numerous inquisitive youngsters.
Even more bustle and excitement accompanied the annual butchering,
and young Dr. Colman, off for a special course in an Eastern medical

5 Esther M. W. Chapin, Diary.

6 Anonymous reminiscences, in Peck Scrapbook, III, n, Roch. Hist. Soc.

7 Elisabeth Selden Spencer to Joseph Spencer, Rochester, Jan. 30, 1823, Elisabeth
Selden Spencer Eaton Letters, cjpurtesy of Mrs. Elizabeth Selden Rogers, New York
City,

8 Rochester Telegraph, Oct. 21, 1823; Feb. 10, 1824; Blake McKelvey, "The
Flower City: Center of Nurseries and Fruit Orchards," R. H. S., Pub., XVIII,
120-125.

*Ebenezer Frost to Col. Rochester, Apr. 18, 1826; John J. G. Frost to Col.
Rochester, Troy, July 20, 1826, Rochester Letters, Roch. Hist. Soc.

M U. R. Hedrick, The History of Agriculture in New York State (Albany,
1938), P. 384-

SOCIAL AND POLITICAL UPHEAVAL 139

school, wrote back with concern in November, 1831, lest his wife,
Colonel Rochester s daughter, Catherine, delay too long the task of
killing the family hogs, for good care should be taken to smoke the
hams before the weather became too cold. u There were enough of these
simple rustic chores to keep the settled members of the community
fairly occupied until kte fall when the families could gather for their
annual Thanksgiving feasts 7 grateful for past blessings but hopeful that
the months ahead would not bring too many days on which it would be
difficult to keep warm before a blazing log fire. 12

The tedious winter months frequently provided opportunity for a
business trip to New York, possibly leaving time for a call on the old
folks in the New England hills. Young relatives or old neighbors from
Yankeeland supplied congenial companions on the return journey,
many of whom were destined to find Rochester an agreeable residence.
The womenfolk who kept the home fires burning through the cold
season occasionally gained a respite during the late summer for a visit
to a Western cousin. Husbands were sure to be more agreeable to such
journeys when thoughts of a renewed migration westward disturbed
their dreams. Esther Maria Ward Chapin enjoyed such a trip, taking
thirteen days for the leisurely drive with her young cousin and Mother
Ward to Marietta on the Ohio by way of Buffalo and Erie. After a brief
visit in which the relative merits of Marietta and Rochester were com
pared, to the latter s advantage in a social though not a business sense,
the party returned without more serious mishap than being caught in
a shower. 1 *

As might be expected, family jealousies tended to develop. It was
perhaps inevitable that they should follow political and economic lines,
but in Rochester they quickly acquired a sectional character as well.
Colonel Rochester s arrival in the community had been welcomed by
his Yankee townsfellows,*but when his numerous offspring filtered in
from neighboring settlements, the semblance of a clan soon became the
object of much ill feeling. 14 The aged Colonel delighted to gather his
growing family about him for an annual picnic at his homestead over
looking the river. With his twelve children, three sons- and two
daughters-in-law, and upwards of a dozen grandchildren, these parties
formed the outstanding social affairs in the village. 15 Doubtless a few
of the more distant in-laws were included, such as the Reverend Francis
Cuming of St. Luke s, whose sister was now the wife of Thomas Hart

11 Dr. Alison Colman to Ms wife, Philadelphia, Nov. 28, 1831, Colman Letters,
Univ. Rochester; Scrantom Journal, MS, Roch. Hist. Soc.
^Esther M. W. Chapin, Diary.
M E. M. W. Chapin, Diary, June i8-July 31, 182 !.

14 Dr. Anson Colman to his wife, Boston, Jan. 17, 1825, Colman Letters.

15 "Descendants of Colonel Nathaniel Rochester," R. H. S,, Pub., Ill, 341-
367-

I 4 o THE WATER-POWER CITY

Rochester, But many received no invitation, and sufficient resentment
against the proprietor developed to cause a slight disturbance in 1824.
The next year, when the bitterness over the struggle for control of the
bank as well as in the political conflict had reached its height, the
disgruntled element sought to place the proprietor s picnic in the shade.
Some 400 invitations were sent out for a Grand Public Ball on that
day, but as only fourteen or fifteen couples appeared the demonstration
was discredited. 16 With the Colonel s removal the next year to his new
and less conspicuous homestead, these family gatherings doubtless ap
peared less objectionable to the great majority of the townsfolk, many
of whom had family groups of their own sufficient to absorb their
attentions. 17

Even the favored homes had their misfortunes as the fever and ague
and many other ailments made undiscriminating visitations to every
household, frequently carrying off a vigorous member. 18 Seventeen
doctors already served the lower Genesee settlements in 1821, when the
Monroe County Medical Society was formed with authority under state
law to appoint officers charged with supervising the local practice of
medicine. By 1827 the number of licensed doctors in the village had in
creased to twenty-five, a high ratio of about one doctor to 320 inhabi
tants. 19 Numerous herbs and roots were in favor, as well as various
patent cures, but "drastic emetics" proved the chief reliance of fever
sufferers seeking to throw off their periodic fits. Fever and consumption,
as loosely defined, accounted for most .deaths among adult persons,
though bowel complaints and accidents were becoming more frequent. 20

While most doctors boasted some training, usually under an older
physician back East, the many prevalent diseases frequently proved
baffling. Anson Colman, seeking further light, traveled east late in
1824 to attend a course of lectures and demonstrations at the Boston
Medical School and Hospital. Leaving his patients in care of an as
sociate, Dr. Colman nevertheless took pains to write his young wife
that winter, advising her to be sure to have the children and her "Pa"
and "Ma" (Colonel and Mrs. Rochester) bled if attacked during his
absence, for, he reminded her, "bleeding is the grand remedy in almost

M Dr. Anson Colman to Ms wife, Rochester, July 9, 1825, Colman Letters.

17 See below, pp. 333, 363.

18 Esther M. W. Chapin, Diary.

19 Betsy C. Corner, "A Century of Medicine in Rochester," R. H. S., Pub.,
Xm, 322-334-

20 Rochester Tek graph, Oct. 9, 1828. Of 29 deaths recorded in September, 6
were attributed to bilious fever, 6 to bowel complaints, 4 to brain and other
fevers, 2 to measles, and i each to old age, consumption, inflammation of the lungs,
inflammatory fever, dysentery, and drowning. Rochester Republican, Jan. 26, 1830.
Of 170 deaths during the previous year, 86 were among young children; 31 of
the older persons were reported killed by consumption and 25 by fever.

SOCIAL AND POLITICAL UPHEAVAL 141

all of our winter complaints." 21 As that remedy, however 3 did not give
full satisfaction^ a medical association was formed to assure its members
a "mutual improvement in medical knowledge. 5122 The appearance
of several small medical treatises written or at least published in
Rochester during these years further indicated concern over health
problems. 23

The practice of sending for the minister by the same lad who brought
the doctor was justified by experience. Fatalities were high among
children, and few of those who survived died of old age. The burial
records of St. Luke s Church during this period reveal twice as many
deaths in the prime of life, 20 to 40 years, as among all over 40.^ Vital
statistics for the month of September, 1828, show that 15 of the 29
deaths occurred among children under 10, and 12 between 20 and 40
years. Again, 86 of the 170 burials for 1829 were children under 10,
and only 12 had reached 60 years. 25 But this situation characterized
most American communities of the day, and many Rochesterians met
it, like devout Christians elsewhere, with the determination not to per
mit one of these afflictions to slip by without gaining the fortitude and
humility of spirit it was meant to teach. 26 Rochester mourners had a
great advantage over more isolated sufferers in the numerous calls from
friendly neighbors, for such visiting early became a major activity of
charitable-minded young matrons. Thus, even bereavements helped to
develop the community ties of the village.

-

The charming community life of early Rochester was not unlike that
of many another village, except for the added excitement and cordiality
born from the half-conscious realization that all were engaged together

21 Dr. Anson Colman to Ms wife, Boston, Dec. 5, 1824, Colman Letters.

^Corner, "Medicine in Rochester/ pp. 333-334; Rochester in 1827 (Rochester,
1828), p. 146.

23 David Rogers, The American^ Physician; Being a New System of Practice
Founded on Botany (Rochester, 1824); John G. Vought, A Treatise on Bowel
Complaints (Rochester, 1823) ; Elijah Sedgwick, The Plain Physician (Rochester,
1827) ; Daniel J. Cobb, The Family Adviser (Rochester, 1828) .

^Annah B. Yates, "Early Records of St. Luke s Church," R, H. S., Pub., V,

158-159*

^Telegraph, Oct. 9, 1828; Roch. Republican, Jan. 26, 1830. Vital statistics for
September, 1940, with a population thirty times as large, reveal only a tenfold
increase in deaths. Of the 299 deaths, only 24 were children under ten (8 per cent
as compared with 51 per cent in 1828), only 38 fell between the ages of fifteen and
fifty, while in were over seventy and another -126 over fifty at the time of death
(79 per cent over fifty as compared with 7 per cent over forty in 1828). See
Rochester Health Bureau Bulletin, September, 1940. Of course a correction for age
distribution would modify this striking contrast, and yet, aside from the decreased
birth rate, a major cause for the wide disparity in the age distributions of the,
two periods is the contrast in death rates noted above.

26 Esther M. W. Chapin, Diary.

142 THE WATER-POWER CITY

in what might be described as a "town raising." But clouds on the
horizon already threatened to darken the sunny days. By the close of
the decade the disharmonies of a boom town had seriously disturbed
the earlier peaceful scene. A description of the village, written in 1824
by Harvey Fish for preservation in the corner stone of the First Presby
terian Church, declared in part:

In 1821 it pleased the Lord to favor this little church with a refreshing
from His presence. At that time some of the first men and lawyers became
hopefully the children of God. . . . Since then the number of those who are
wicked and scoffers has increased faster than that of those who fear God.
Hence there are many among us who are swearers, drunkards, extortioners,
Sabbath breakers, deceivers, liars and who work all manner of iniquity. Col
lectively, the inhabitants may be called a liberal benevolent people. 27

Hundreds of transients and the great number of more or less un
settled residents who crowded the "tenements" and boarding houses
were forced to seek diversion in public places. This was the class best
known to the traveler, whether native or foreign. Every bustling New
York village has its supply of "inhabitants who frequent the taverns
every evening, part dandy, part horse-jockey, and part gentleman," one
traveler observed disdainfully, adding that "they do not interrogate a
stranger as the Yankees do, but rather put on the airs of a city barber
towards a country gentleman." 28 The daily throng of drivers who
brought loads of grain, bark, firewood, hay, or other produce in from
the surrounding farms and the canallers awaiting the departure of their
boats added still other elements to the scene. Probably few places in the
mid-twenties attracted a more turbulent concourse than the Genesee
market town at the height of its boom. 29

Facilities for the accommodation and entertainment of these groups
were quickly provided, as the multiplication of groceries indicated. The
first years of canal activity hi Rochester gaw an increase of commercial
amusements as well as the opening of a public bathhouse equipped to
supply .a hundred baths a day. Dancing masters offered instruction in
social graces, and the Monroe Garden, "nicely ^fitted up with booths and
gravel walks and ornamented with shrubs and flowers," supplied an
open-air resort. 30 The taverns provided dining and drinking rooms,
billiard tables and ninepin alleys at all seasons, while their ballrooms, or
long halls, served for dances and acrobatic performances. 81

The appearance and activity of the central part of the village radically

27 Democrat & Chronicle, April 27, 1871.

28 Letter signed "A. B.," reprinted from the Utica Sentinel in the Telegraph,
July 16, 1822.

29 "Major Noah, A Peep at the West," Telegraph, June 28, 1825.

30 Jesse Hatch, "Memories of Vfflage Days," R. H. S., Pub., IV, 235-247;
Telegraph, May 10, 1825.

81 Hatch, "Memories of Village Days"; Telegraph, July 8, 1823.

SOCIAL AND POUT1CAL UPHEAVAL 143

altered during the decade. For several years the horse trough in front
of the Ensworth tavern at the Four Comers and the water fountain
and circular trough in the mill yard at the southwest end of the bridge
had appeared fit symbols of the village Efe 7 attracting teamsters to the
heart of town. But by the dose of the period the heavy produce wagons
were left standing farther out or taken directly to the mills and ware
houses. By this time the wooden tavern at the Four Comers had been
removed to a rear lot, and an elegant brick hotel was in process of erec
tion on the site; though the fountain in the mill yard remained ** the
horse trough disappeared from its central corner. Reynolds Arcade, the
Globe Building, and many lesser structures presented a fairly con
tinuous Kne of store fronts, at least on the north side of Buffalo and
Main streets and around the comer on Carroll and Mill streets, soon to
be renamed State and Exchange.

A fashionable attire was becoming respectable in more than one sense.
The dandy of the early twenties became the successful business man
of a few years later, almost without altering his garb. On special oc
casions he might don a high stock, a blue broadcloth coat cut swallow
tail, a buff-colored vest decked with brass buttons, a pair of uncreased
mouse-colored trousers which nearly covered the white stockings, and
shoes sporting a pair of shiny buckles. Tailors hailing from New York
or Philadelphia were ready to accommodate gentlemen with the latest
fashions, 33 while the number of millinery shops catering to "females"
drew comment from Basil HaH. 34 Even matrons among the settled
residents found pleasure in a promenade along the new pavements which
added dignity as well as comfort to the growing town. 35 "A spirit of
obtaining the fashions," as one traveler observed, "seems to prevail
among all classes, from the steeple top to the shoe string." M

The eagerness with which the church societies followed the latest
architectural design in their new Gothic edifices, even, in the case of
St. Paul s, importing stained glass rosettes for the windows, 37 made it
difficult to condemn fashion as such. "Rochester was made up of young,
dashing, generous people," Thurlow Weed later recalled. 38 Lotteries
enjoyed an almost unquestioned respectability as convenient devices for
raising educational and charitable funds, 39 and it was proving difficult

32 See the map of Rochester, 1833,

* Telegraph, Oct. 3, 1820; G. B. F. Hallock and Maude Motley, A Living
Church, the First Hundred Years of the Brick Church in Rochester (Rochester,
1925), p. 204.

34 Basil Hall, Travels in North America in the Years 1827 and 182$, p. 156.

85 Reminiscences of the i82o s," Peck Scrapbook, III, n, Roch. Hist. Soc.

** Telegraph, July 16, 1822.

37 Roch. Republican, June i, 1830.

^Thurlow Weed, Autobiography, pp. 99-100.

39 Generous space was devoted to lottery advertisements in the early papers,
the most frequent being the New York State Literature Lottery.

i 4 4 THE WATER-POWER CITY

to regulate or expel other agencies which played an active part in the
vigorous social Hfe.

Almost without realizing it, Rochester had blossomed forth as a
leading "bright spot" of western New York. 40 The occasional concerts
welcomed to the meeting house at the beginning of the decade 41 con
tinued, while traveling animal shows, panoramas, and at least one
theatrical troupe performed in the various taverns before 1825, the
year in which the Rochester Circus appeared on Mill (Exchange) Street.
The first dramatic season was perhaps that of March, 1824, when a
group of actors from the Albany and New York theaters visited
Rochester and performed "How to Die for Love" and other plays in
Christopher s Long Room. 42 The construction of the circus building
a year later afforded more adequate facilities for a second dramatic
season, though the disorderly character of the crowd in the pit roused
frequent complaints. 43 The museum of wax figures exhibited in the
village in 1821 made occasional return visits, attracting much attention
to its Temple of Industry, in which twenty-six moving figures demon
strated as many different employments. 44 A permanent museum opened
in 1825, when J. R, Bishop, whose museum of wax figures, panoramas,
and other novelties had been located for a time in both Canandaigua
and Buffalo, removed finally to Rochester, where the educational value
of his displays won continued support. 45

The year 1826 brought a burst of dramatic activity on the Genesee.
Two theatrical companies bid for dominance, each opening in new
quarters during the year and presenting numerous performances despite
the heavy license fees exacted by the trustees. H. A. Williams, who
enlisted the support of local citizens in erecting a new building on
Carroll Street, enjoyed much popular favor. 46 The frequent appearance
of an able star, such as Robert G. Maywood from the Chatham Garden
Theater in New York, attracted a more respectable audience and
enabled the Williams theater to continue after the failure of its rival.

Public sentiment soon divided over the merits of these activities.
Most of the Yankee Presbyterians strongly disapproved of the theater,
but Hamlet Scrantorn, pioneer resident and now sexton of St. Luke s,

40 George M. Elwood, "Some Earlier Public Amusements of Rochester," R. H. S.,
Pub., I, 17-27; Nellie E. Bitz, "A Half Century of Theater in Early Rochester,"
M. A. thesis, Syracuse University, 1941, typed copy, Roch. Pub. Library,

41 R. H. Lansing, "Music in Rochester," R. H. S., Pub., II, 135-138-

42 Telegraph, Mar. ( i6, June i$, 1824.

^Monroe Republican, Sept. 27, Oct. u, Nov. 15, 1825; May 30, 1826.

^Telegraph, Jan. 2, 1821; July 27, Nov. 9, 1824.

45 Ontario Repository, Dec. 12, 1820; Telegraph, Jan. 2, i&2i, July 27, 1824;
Advertiser, Oct. 16, 1827.

^Elwood, "Public Amusements of Rochester"; Bitz, "Theater in Early Roch
ester," pp. 15-30.

VI. i. ENOS STONE VI. 2. HAMLET SCRANTOM

VI. 3. ABELARD REYNOLDS VI. 4- >* LEVI WARD

W

w

03

o
W

O
CJ

SOCIAL AND POLITICAL UPHEAVAL 145

eagerly noted in Ms diary the visits of a circus and frequently attended
the offerings at the new theater. 41 The rising attorney, Frederick
WMttlesey, a graduate of Yale and Litchfield, delivered an address to
Thespis in verse at the theater s opening at which "The Honeymoon"
and "The Poor Soldier" were presented. Almost unknown among the
performers was "Little Billy" Forrest, destined, years later, to acquire
distinction as a comedian. A fairly active dramatic season enlivened
the village that year, especially after a practicable licensing arrangement
was reached with the trustees. At least one actor of the first rank,
Edmund Kean, stopped over during a visit to Niagara Falls long
enough to take part in the "Iron Chest/ 3 then playing at the Rochester
theater. 48 "Fortune s Frolick," "William Tell," "Robinson Crusoe,"
"Kenilworth," "Macbeth/ 5 "Sweethearts and Wives/ 5 were among the
varied offerings.

But the company failed to overcome the community s growing
hostility. Several charitable matrons, learning how to be stiff-necked as
well, declined an offer of a benefit performance for the Female Charitable
Society. Denied a respectable patronage, the theater struggled along
with such audiences as it could attract. In an effort to gratify local
interest, Charles S. Talbot, Rochester s leading actor in 1827, wrote
and produced "Captain Morgan, or the Conspiracy Unveiled/ attracting
crowds for several nights by his lively account of the current Morgan
scandal, but that issue proved too serious for light treatment. Successive
troupes, shortening their Rochester visits, hastened westward in search
of a more favorable response. 49 One editor, complaining that inhabitants
"within gun-shot of the theatre have been compelled to hear till mid
night or after, reiterated peals of hooting, howling, shouting, shrieking,
and almost every other unseemly noise," demanded that the village
refuse to grant further licenses. 50 Though no such ordinance appeared in
the trustees 7 minutes, the first attempt to establish a permanent local
theater was defeated. 51

The greater favor enjoyed by animal shows resulted, in 1827, in a
free license for the local exhibit of the "animal automatons" as well as
"the Grecian Dog Apollo," noted for his mathematical skill. Tippoo
Sultan, "the great hunting elephant from India," was hailed as the
leading member of a Grand Carnival that visited Rochester in 1823,
and five years later the learned elephant, Columbus, said to weigh
8120 pounds, lumbered in on his own power for a two-day visit.

47 Hamlet Scrantom, Journal, Sept. 2-1, 1825; May 15, June 26, July i, 1826.
^Monroe Republican, July 18, 1826; Harold N. Hillebrand, Edmund Kean
(New York, 1933), p. 271.

49 Charles S. Talbot, Captain Morgan, or the Conspiracy Unveiled (Rochester,
1827) ; Bitz, "Theater in Early Rochester," pp. 29-57.

50 Album, Jan. 8, 1828.

51 Elwood, "Public Amusements of Rochester," pp. 17-27.

i 4 6 TEE WATER-POWER CITY

Equestrian performers provided the more usual features of these visiting
animal shows. Tickets costing from 25 to 50 cents were eagerly pur
chased by the numerous wagoners in from the lonely life on the scat
tered farms. 52

-<

But if Rochester was a place to write home about, the noncommercial-
ized opportunities for amusement and excitement were chiefly re
sponsible. The falls and the river gorge provided choice views and in
teresting strolls on all occasions, 53 and no closed season checked fishing,
although bathing within the bounds was now tabu even after dark. 54
A lively scene usually appeared around the mill yards and canal basins,
particularly at Ely s basin at the morning or evening hour of the packet
boat s arrival or departure. Numerous unusual building operations at
tracted attention: a steeple going up here, a four-story tavern over
there, a great stone mill on the very brink of the gorge, a market actually
straddling the rushing torrent of the river. Even the Sabbath became
more animated as the clanging of the increased number of church bells
called out streams of communicants, resplendent in a Sunday best that
was ever adding new frills and ruffles. 55

On special occasions the busy community paused to celebrate a local
or national achievement or to honor a visiting celebrity. Farmers from
miles around would not miss the thrill of the Rochester crowds on
such days. The annual Fourth of July celebration, with the Rochester
band proudly leading the parade and local parsons or attorneys supply
ing the necessary pabulum, usually concluded with a banquet at a
leading tavern. 56 Regulations against the use of firearms within the
bounds were relaxed to permit Captain Benjamin Brown s Rifle Brigade
or the local detachment of Irish Volunteers to fire the traditional
salutes. 57 The local band and the militia companies made frequent con
tributions to the life of the town in their annual military balls, and on
one occasion the bands of neighboring towns visited Rochester to take
part in a musical display. 58

^Telegraph, July 8, 1823; Nov. 16, 1824; Advertiser, July 30, 1828; "Mr.
Champh n s Benefit," MS program of a performance in Rochester on Oct. 25, 1825.
See also R. W. G. Vail, "Random Notes on the History of the Early American
Circus," Amer. Antiquarian Soc., Proceedings, vol. XXXIII, new series, part I
(April, 1933) > PP- 116-185.

53 Joseph H, Nichols, Diary, MS, copied in Samson Note Book, XI, 96, Roch.
Hist. Soc.

^Rochester Directory (1827), p. 100.

55 William B. Knox to Hon. L. C. Paine, Rochester, July n, Aug. 3, 1829, MS,
Autograph Letters, Roch. Hist Soc.; "Reminiscences of J. L. H. Mosier," Union
and Advertiser, Feb. 12, 1884.

56 Monroe Republican, June 21, 1821 ; Gazette, July n, 1820.

57 W. C. Case, "Rochester s Citizen Soldiers," R. H. S., Pub., XIV, 233-237.
^Scrantom Journal, Feb. 22, Mar. 28, 1826; Feb. 22, 1827.

SOCIAL AND POLITICAL UPHEAVAL 147

More formal pageantry and still greater excitement marked the local
reception of General Lafayette on his American tour. It was on June 7,
1825, that the "Nation s Guest" arrived by canal boat, escorted by a
flotilla of twelve flag-bedecked packets crowded with Rochesterians who
had gone out to meet the venerable general. The village thronged with
double its normal population as an estimated ten thousand lined the
bridges over the canal and other points of vantage along the route,
eager to take part in the joyful acclamation, 59 To Lafayette and his
companions it must have been just a continuation of an already over-
prolonged tour, 60 but to the villagers it afforded an occasion for thoughts
of the republic and its foreign friends, of its principles, and especially of
its remarkable history. In similar spirit, the community undertook a
general illumination, hanging lanterns at every door, on a December
evening two years later in honor of the defeat of the Turks. 61

Of course the celebration most directly related to local affairs was
that marking the official opening of the canal. Plans for the occasion
had long been discussed throughout the state, and as each community
along the canal desired a share in the festivities, a triumphal journey
by Governor Clinton, its faithful champion, was agreed upon. News of
the official completion of the canal, sounded eastward from point to
point by a succession of widely spaced cannon, reverberated through
Rochester at 10:20 on the morning of October 26, i82S. 62 The town s
reception of the official party the next afternoon proved spirited despite
a steady rain. The two local companies, now boasting an artillery, ap
peared in dress uniform, supported by rifle companies from Rush and
Penfield. Services in the spacious Presbyterian church which stood at
the very edge of the canal preceded a bounteous dinner at the Mansion
House. A special Rochester boat, named the "Young Lion of the West,"
laden with barrels of Rochester flour and other products, joined the
procession as it continued the slow journey to New York. A ball in
Colonel Leonard s assembly room and a "brilliant illumination" of the
village with lanterns at every door and candles at many windows fittingly
concluded the local celebration that evening. 63

A celebration of special interest was that of local members and friends
of the colored race who paraded on July 5, 1827, rejoicing over the
final grant of freedom to all Negroes in New York State. A colored pastor

69 Telegraph, June 14, 1825.

60 A. Levasseur, Lafayette in America in 1824 and 1825 (New York, 1829), II,

2 l5~2l6.

^Scrantom Journal, Dec. 22, 1827. The great naval battle of Navarino had
occurred two months before.

^Monroe Republican, Nov. i, 1825.

63 Monroe Republican, Nov. i, 15, 1825; Cadwallader D. Golden, Memoir . . .
of the Celebration of the New York Canals (New York, 1825), pp. 166-168, 191-
192, 198, 299-300; Scrantom Journal.

148 THE WATER-POWER CITY

with a Methodist license took part in the festivities, and soon the first
African Methodist Episcopal Church was organized and a building
dedicated the next year, though not in time for the second independence
day. 6 *

But the event destined to serve as a climax to the sometimes reckless
pageantry of the boom town was Sam Patch s leap over the main falls.
Patch had earned a reputation for daring feats in the East, both in
New England and New Jersey, and his spreading fame as a cataract
jumper prompted an invitation to demonstrate his skill at Niagara in
the fall of i829. 65 After two successful jumps there, one from a perch a
hundred feet above the water, Sam could not hesitate over the Genesee.
Indeed, he successfully performed the jump from a rocky ledge at the
brink of the main falls early in November, and the plaudits of a small
crowd encouraged him to announce a last jump for that season a week
later over the same falls. Sam s laconic remark that "some things can
be done as well as others" was picked up and passed along as a fit motto
by Ms admirers as preparations for a gala occasion advanced. A plat
form, erected on Brown s Island overlooking the falls, increased the
height above water to 120 feet, and on Friday, November 13, a great
throng gathered from the town and the country round, lining the natural
amphitheater of the gorge to see the widely advertised spectacle.
Whether or not Sam had relaxed his self-control at a tavern before
hand, the bold jumper apparently lost his customary poise in the
descent. With arms whirling he struck the water with a great splash
and failed to reappear in its swirling eddies.

Rochester gained wide fame from Sam s last jump, and Patch became
the subject of much doggerel verse, winning a place in the folklore of
the young republic, but it was a chastened and thoughtful populace that
quietly dispersed from the falls that day. 66

RAMPANT POLITICAL JOURNALISM

The politico-economic rivalries of the early twenties were but mild
forerunners of the journalistic outbursts soon to occur. Rochester s sud
den rise had made it the publication center of western New York, at
tracting a dozen aspiring editors and publishers who displayed little
restraint in their struggle for leadership. The rapidly shifting political
scene placed a premium on aggressive ingenuity, while the growing in
tensity of moral compunctions provided the dynamics for righteous

64 R. H. $., Pub., VII, 134; Advertiser, July 7, 1828; Observer, Sept. 12, Oct. 3,
1828; Observer, July 7, 1828.

65 Gem, Sept. 19, Oct. 3, 31, 1829.

^Gem, Nov. 14, 1829; Samson Notebook III, ist item; XI, 215-216; XVT, 44.
Samson has collected many of the poems and other references to this exploit, rang
ing down through the years in widely scattered publications too numerous to list
here.

SOCIAL AND POLITICAL UPHEAVAL 149

crusades. Contending loyalties drove old friends in diverging directions,
or brought former enemies together, producing violent conflicts which
displayed the immaturity of the boom town.

The rival journalists of the early years had each enjoyed a generous
political or factional backing. A. G. Dauby, a Republican brought from
Utica by Colonel Rochester to establish the pioneer weekly Gazette,
soon became a respected member of St. Luke s. Derrick and Levi Sibley,
who bought out that paper in 1821 and renamed it the Monroe Re
publican, were men of the same stamp. 67 Everard Peck of the Telegraph,
a Yankee Presbyterian with Federalist antecedents/ 8 early entrusted
the politics of his paper to Thurlow Weed ? whose skill in drawing the
Clinton and Adams factions into the People s party of 1824 upset the
former Bucktail majority and made the Telegraph the leading paper in
western New York at the mid-decade, enabling it to venture on a semi-
weekly edition. 69

The rapidly shifting scene, both in the village and the state, soon
raised complications. The breach between Governor Clinton and Presi
dent Adams severely tried Weed s political strategy on the Telegraph,
acquired in 1825 in partnership with Robert Martin, a recent arrival
from Albany. 70 Another newcomer, Daniel Sprague, established the
professedly non-partisan Album late that year, 71 while the conciliatory
temperament of young Edwin Scrantom, who took over the Republican
at this time, 72 may have accelerated the shift of some of its more re
spectable backers into the Adams camp. Indeed, the differences between
these papers gradually became less distinct until the Telegraph ab
sorbed the Republican early in 1827, launching finally a daily edi
tion. 73

The reputation of the booming town had meanwhile attracted a new
and ambitious journalistic venture, the Daily Advertiser, in 1826. When
Luther Tucker and Henry C. Sleight of Jamaica, Long Island, chose the
Genesee canal port as the site for a daily paper, there was scarcely a
precedent for such an undertaking in any interior settlement. 7 * Never-

67 Gazette, May 30, iSao-Feb. 13, 1821; Monroe Republican, August, 1825-
Aug. i, 1826.

68 Telegraphy July, i8i8-Jan. 4, 1829.

69 Weed, Autobiography, pp. 95-111, 157-162; Telegraph, Dec. 10, 1822, Oct. 19,
Nov. 30, 1824.

70 Weed, Autobiography, p. 202; Telegraph, Sept. 6, 1825.

71 Album, Nov. 10, i825-Oct. 3, 1826; Oct. 8, i827-July 22, 1828.

72 H. Scrantom, Journal, July 27, Aug. 2, 1825.

73 Daily Telegraph, May 3, 1827; June-November, 1828.

74 Frequent reference to the Advertiser as the first daily west of Albany re
quires modification, for a short-lived Cincinnati daily had recently suspended,
while the National Banner of Nashville was alternating between a daily and semi-
weekly program. See Winifred Gregory, ed., Union List of Newspapers (New York>
1937) 5 New York Evening Post, Oct. 31, 1826.

ISO THE WATER-POWER CITY

theless, Rochester s prospects appeared favorable, and Luther Tucker,
the active member of the firm, moved to Rochester that fall, bringing
with him as editor Henry O Reilly, a twenty-year-old Irish immigrant
whose ten years hi New York had been marked by a precocious advance
in the printer s trade. The new paper, designed as a commercial journal,
independent in politics, attracted favorable notice in Eastern journals,
further stimulating village growth. 75

The Daily Advertiser quickly became involved in local political quar
rels. The volatile personality of its young editor would have made an
indifferent attitude unlikely, even without the explosive forces which
then animated the village, but the developments themselves amply
justified the paper s increasing partisanship. The same forces prompted
the launching of several new weeklies, advocates of one or another
aspect of local controversies. Such was the Rochester Observer, started
in 1827 to agitate for moral reform, pledging its profits to the missionary
cause. 76 A Paul Pry 1 1 appeared briefly during the succeeding year,
badgering the editors and readers of the Observer. The Anti-Masonic
Enquirer established early in 1828, endeavored to make political and
journalistic capital out of the discomfiture of the Masons, while the
Craftsman 79 appeared a year later in their defense. Possibly no town
of its size in the country surpassed Rochester in the number of its
journalistic offerings in the late twenties.

As the enterprise of the six printing offices and thirty-one printers
employed in the village in 1827 was not wholly absorbed by these news
paper ventures, several operated bookstores and lending libraries, and
Everard Peck had in addition a prosperous paper mill. 80 The different
firms eagerly undertook the publication of broadsides and pamphlets,
while books that gave promise of attracting buyers were patiently
turned out, a few pages a day. si Everard Peck, the most energetic,
printed at least thirty books and pamphlets before 1827. His first book,
The Whole Duty of Woman, 82 appeared in 1819, two years after Dauby
had issued the eight-page Constitution and Proceedings of the Charitable

75 Henry O Reilly, "American Journalism," R. H. S., Pub., VI, 279-290; Mary B.
Sleight, "Henry C. Sleight," R. H. S., Pub., VI, 273-279; Edward R. Foreman,
"O Reilly Documents," R. H. S., Pub., IX, 123-145.

76 Observer, Feb. 17, i827-ept. 19, 1832.

77 Craftsman, Oct. 13, 1829.

7S Anti-M asonic Enquirer, Mar. 4, 1828; Sept. 15, i829-Nov. i, 1831, when it
was renamed the Inquirer.

79 Craftsman, Feb. 10, i829~February, 1831.

80 Album, Dec. 25, 1827.

81 Weed, Autobiography, pp. 95-96.

82 Donald B. Gilchrist, "The First Book Printed in Rochester," R. H. S., Pub.,
IX, 275-280. The fuU title is The Whole Duty of Woman: A New Edition, with
Considerable Improvements to which is added, Edwin and Angelina: A Tale
(Rochester: Printed and sold by E. Peck & Co., 1819).

SOCIAL AND POLITICAL UPHEAVAL 151

Society, the first pamphlet printed in the village. 83 Peck started a series
of almanacs in 1820, introducing Oliver Loud as a new and able
philomath in 1822 and illustrating the months with a unique series of
wood cuts depicting rural life. 84 At least a dozen sermons and as many
religious tracts, two medical handbooks, three pamphlets dealing with
civic affairs, eight school books, and one novel were printed in these
years by Peck and his rivals. 65 Aside from the sermons and the
pamphlets, the first book to be written in Rochester was probably
The Columbian Arithmetick, prepared by a local schoolmaster, Thomas
A Filer. 86

The year 1827 brought a sudden increase in local publications. A score
of Rochester imprints that year contrasted with the half dozen or so in
previous years. Eight daily and weekly papers attained circulations of
more than 1000 copies in a few cases. 87 For three years the Rochester
presses literally hummed with activity as the printers reaped war profits
from the raging journalistic battles which burst forth over the abduction
of William Morgan.

Masonic societies appeared among the earliest institutions brought
by the settlers into the Genesee Country. The first lodge in the area
was organized at Canandaigua in 1792,^ and several others were in
stituted before a movement developed in 1815 for a lodge at Rochester.
Though the application remained unanswered by the Grand Lodge, of
which DeWitt Clinton then served as grand master, until June 5, 1817,
Wells Lodge, No. 282, speedily perfected its organization at the Mansion
House in the settlement s first year of villagehood. Less than two years
later a second lodge, Hamilton Chapter, No. 62, Royal Arch Masons,
formed in the village, while a third appeared in 1826 on the eve of the
outbreak of the Morgan controversy. 89 By that date, nine lodges
flourished in the county and many more in the surrounding territory.

The Rochester lodges attracted a varied membership, including many

83 [Edward R. Foreman], "Check List of Rochester Publications," R. H. $.,
Pub., V, 176; Douglas C. McMurtrie, Rochester Imprints: 1819-1850: in Libraries
Outside of Rochester (Chicago, 1935), pp. 13-19.

84 Blake McKelvey, "Early Almanacs of Rochester," Rochester History, January,
1941. Peck s almanac started as a modified version of the Andrew Beers series
issued in Canandaigua, Utica, etc. for several years previously; but starting in
1822 the almanac, finally named the Western Alamanack in 1824, was distinctly
a local product.

85 Foreman, "Check List," pp. 175-181; McMurtrie, Rochester Imprints.
^Thomas A. Filer, The Columbian Arithmetick (Rochester; Everard Peck,

1826), Univ. Rochester.

87 Album, Apr. 4, 1826; Democrat, Jan. 4, 1837.

88 W. H. Mclntosh, History of Ontario County (Philadelphia, 1876), p. 63.

89 John B. Mullan, "Early Masonic History in Rochester," R. H. S., Pub., VII,
7-n.

152 THE WATER-POWER CITY

leaders of the community. In fact, the lodges were almost alone in
bringing together men of opposing parties and rival sects Abelard
Reynolds, Vincent Mathews, William Atkinson, Jonathan Child, the
Reverend Francis Cuming, the Reverend Comfort Williams, Elisha
Ely, Azel Ensworth, and E. B. Strong among others. 90 There were ap
parently fewer Presbyterian than Episcopalian Masons and fewer
Clintonians than Bucktails, though notable exceptions (DeWitt Clinton
himself) stood out. Very likely the organization s growing influence had
much to do with the gradual rapprochement between Bucktail Republi
cans and Clintonians in western New York after 1825.

Among those admitted to Wells Lodge in Rochester was a middle-
aged stone mason destined to play a central role in the violent Anti-
masonic outburst soon to occur. William Morgan, a migrant from
Virginia who had recently seen Ms brewery in York (Toronto) across
the lake go up in smoke, was attracted to Rochester in 1822 by the
opportunity for employment on the aqueduct. 91 Full of wit and socia
bility, Morgan gained many friends and rapidly advanced through the
successive Masonic degrees, but as his economic achievements proved
less gratifying he soon moved his family to Batavia where rents seemed
more reasonable. The idea of cashing in on his Masonic secrets was ap
parently first conceived early in 1826 when he approached Thurlow
Weed with such a proposition. Rebuffed on that occasion and disap
pointed in an application for employment on a new Masonic hall in
LeRoy, Morgan was again offended by his failure to gain admittance
to the Royal Arch Chapter in Batavia. When the plan to publish the
secrets of Masonry was revived, David C. Miller, publisher of the
Republican Advocate in Batavia, agreed to undertake the job. 92

Widespread jealousy of the fraternal advantages enjoyed by the
Masons and repeated criticism of their secret oaths assured the Morgan
revelations a sensational reception. News of the venture spread quickly
through the scattered lodges, and when efforts to dissuade Morgan and
Miller failed, a copy of the completed portion of the book was secured
by stealth and brought to Rochester for examination. Robert Martin,
Weed s Masonic partner on the Telegraph, rushed it to the General
Grand Chapter in New York, where he received instructions to return
the copy and assume an indifferent attitude in an attempt to ride out
any storm its publication might create. But the advice came too late to
head off the efforts of neighboring Masons to discipline their renegade
member. 98

^Thomas G\idd<m t ^History of Hamilton Chapter No. 62, Royal Arch Masons
(Rochester, 1879), PP* 3~ 2 S-

** Dictionary of American Biography, XIII, 188-189.

^Robert D. Burns, "The Abduction of William Morgan," R. H. S., Pub.,
VI, 219-221; Weed, Autobiography, pp. 212-213.

93 Burns, "William Morgan," pp. 222-230; Weed, Autobiography, pp. 215!!.

SOCIAL AND POLITICAL UPHEAVAL 153

Rochester Inevitably became the center of the popular outburst which
followed Morgan s disappearance. Indignation mounted as the story
was gradually pieced together that fall: how he had been abducted from
Batavia by Ontario Masons to face trumped-up charges in Canandaigua,
and how after Ms release there he had been spirited through Rochester
in the early morning of September ijth and lodged In a magazine of
old Fort Niagara, from which he disappeared forever a few days later. 94
At least two Rochester Masons, Burrage Smith, a grocer, and John
Whitney, a stone mason, were actively involved in the abduction,
although their names did not Immediately become known. 95

Many good Masons, innocent of any participation In the affair and
confident that their brothers had simply persuaded Morgan to seek a
new home abroad, resented the popular condemnation of their society,
Others, less ignorant of the circumstances but persuaded that Morgan
could have received no more than his deserts, sought to protect the
good name of the organization by aiding the active culprits to flee the
country. 96 By coincidence, a group of Rochester Masons chartered the
Ontario for a trip to Lewiston to take part In a Masonic installation
which occurred in the midst of the affair. Young Edwin Scrantom, a
member of the party, apparently gained but an inkling of the predica
ment which faced the western Masons after the refusal of their Canadian
brethren to receive Morgan. Some, better acquainted with the facts,
could see no reason why the threatening informer, Edward Giddins,
should not be paid the bribe he demanded for silence. 97

Initiative in the search for the guilty persons was early assumed by
committees of correspondence appointed at indignation meetings in the
various towns. The Batavia and Canandaigua committees were the first
in the field, but Bates Cooke of the Lewiston committee and Samuel
Works, Hervey Ely, Dr. F. F. Backus, Frederick Whittlesey, and
Thurlow Weed of the Rochester committee quickly assumed leader
ship. 98 As the details of the crime began to emerge, the reluctance of
some Masons in key positions to prosecute their brethren became more
apparent, sharpening the popular indignation against the order. Never
theless, a trial of three persons accused of participation in Morgan s
abduction from Canandaigua was staged at the Ontario Court House

54 Weed, Autobiography, pp. 2-1 5ff.; Henry Brown, A Narrative of the Anti-
Masonic Excitement (Batavia, 1829), pp. 29-34, 38-43; Robert Morris, LL.D.,
William Morgan, or Political Anti-Masonry (New York, 1883), pp. 55-112.

95 Burns, "William Morgan," pp. 228-229.

96 Weed, Autobiography, pp. 242, 245-247.

97 Trial of P. Whitney, T. Shaw, N. Beach, William Miller and 5. M. Chubbuck
for the Abduction . . . of WWam Morgan before the Special Court at Lockport,
Feb., 1831 (Lockport), pp. 31 and passim.

98 Brown, Anti-Masonic Excitement, pp. 60-64; Weed, Autobiography, pp. 225,
230.

154 THE WATER-POWER CITY

in January, 1827. The heaviest snow of ten years blanketed the country-
side ; blocking many of the roads, yet the case attracted such a crowd
that half the visitors could not find beds in Canandaigua." Over one
hundred witnesses were examined, and convictions were finally secured,
though popular wrath mounted when it was learned that the evidence
uncovered had only substantiated misdemeanor charges and that sen
tences ranging from one month to two years had closed the trail. 100

The potentialities of the controversy became more evident as the
year advanced. Despite open threats against several witnesses, which
strengthened suspicions that Morgan had met a violent end, 101 a con
vention of investigating committees at Lewiston gathered additional
evidence. Yet new attempts at court action were frustrated in one way
or another, and the flight of some of the suspected Masons, including
Whitney and Smith of Rochester, fanned resentment against the order. 102

The first prescriptive measures against all Masons gained little favor,
however, since popular concern still centered on Morgan s fate. Though
scattered meetings in rural communities during the early spring rallied
voters against any and all Masons who stood for public office, the
Rochester committee, apparently worried lest such a move split the
Clintonian party and destroy its scant majority in the county, en
deavored to head off the movement. Their fears seemed justified when
Dr. Backus, a committee member whb had long served as village
treasurer, was defeated in May, 1827, by a BucktaU Mason. Neverthe
less, the committee hesitated to launch an open political venture, though
the proposition was frequently considered that summer. 103 In similar
fashion the first murmurings against Masonic parsons wholly innocent
of the crime helped to rally sober men to their defense. 104 Yet deep-seated
emotions were being stirred up and reputations were being staked on
one side or the other, seriously aggravating the controversy. The Genesee
Country gained a new sobriquet, the "Infected Area," and distant ob
servers began to fear the spread of the malady. 105

<

In Rochester the issue quickly became the center of a bitter politico-
journalistic quarrel. At least twelve editions of Morgan s Illustrations of

99 Advertiser, Jan. 5, 1827; L. W. Sibley to A. Reynolds, Jan. 5, 1827, Reynolds
Papers; Brown, Anti-Masonic Excitement, pp. 74-88.

100 Weed, Autobiography, pp. 231-237, 241-242; Brown, Anti-Masonic Excite
ment, pp. 84-89; Morris, Wittiam Morgan, pp. 113202.

101 Weed, Autobiography, pp. 243-248.

102 Weed, pp. 242-243, 249, 299-300; Brown, pp. 221-224.

103 Weed, pp. 242-243, 249, 299-300; Brown, pp. 221-224.

104 Weed, p. 249; Brown, pp. 239-244.

105 Charles McCarthy, "The Antimasonic Party: A Study of Political Anti-
masonry hi the United States, 1827-1840," Am. Hist. Assoc., Annual Report, 1902,
I, 372ff.

SOCIAL AND POUTICAL UPHEAVAL 155

Masonry were brought out in the village during 1827, while four other
Antimasonic publications added to the profits of local printers that
year. 106 Thurlow Weed was restrained by Ms partner and the clients of
the Telegraphy though Ms early outspoken editorials on the abduction
had made him a prominent member of the local Morgan committee. 101
O Reilly on the Advertiser, while urging a vigorous prosecution of tie
guilty, attempted to steer a moderate course, declaring that "for our
part we can by no means follow the fashion of some editors in branding
societies with the guilt of a few." loe An exchange of views between these
rival editors became sufficiently bitter to cause O Reilly to seek a less
contentious post in the East, but news that Weed had sold his interests
in the Telegraph and proposed to remove to Utica prompted the young
Irishman s hasty return. 109 The issue, it appeared, was acquiring dis
favor, as public opinion $wung against the agitators during the late
Slimmer.

But the September lull disappeared when the full fury of the storm
burst a month later. Despite Weed s failure to receive encouragement
in Utica, the Rochester committee determined to ran an Antimasonic
slate in the fall elections, and a Monroe County convention gathered
at Rochester for that purpose in September. Although several leading
Clintonians refused to lend their names to the cause, the opportunist,
Timothy Childs of Rochester, consented to accept the convention s
nomination to the legislature, adding it to his earlier endorsement by
a local Bucktail faction. There seemed, nevertheless, little hope for
victory against the regular Clintonian candidates until the "infected
region" was again inflamed by the rumor that Morgan s body had at
last been found on the shore of Lake Ontario. 110

A body had indeed washed up near the outlet of Oak Orchard Creek
early in October, more than a year after Morgan s final disappearance.
A hastily organized coroner s jury failed to identify the corpse, which
was duly buried before Dame Rumor linked it with the missing victim
of Masonry. At that suggestion the Rochester committee sprang into
action, quickly uncovering the grave for a second inquest at which
numerous witnesses, including the unfortunate "widow," were ex
amined. The body was now proclaimed to be that of the long-lost
Morgan. 111 But scarcely had the Antimasonic forces buried their martyr

106 Foreman, "Check List," pp. 181-184.

107 Weed, Autobiography, pp. 210-212, 213-214.

^Rochester Mercury, Jan. 23, 1827. This is the sole remaining issue of the
short-lived weekly edition of the Advertiser.

109 Luther Tucker to Henry O Reilly, Rochester, Sept. 19, 1837, O Reilly Docu
ments, No. 2447, Roch. Hist. Soc.

110 Weed, Autobiography, pp. 299-302; Observer, Oct. 20, 1827; Album, Oct. 23,
1827.

111 Album, Oct. 30, 1827; Brown, Anti-Masonic Excitement, pp. 167-176.

156 THE WATER-POWER CITY

in state at Batavia when the widow of one Timothy Monro, drowned
in the Niagara five weeks before, laid claim to the corpse. Weed re
ceived assurance from the leading Antimason of Lewiston that the body
could not possibly be identified as Monro, 112 yet a second Rochester
committee, headed by Jacob Gould, 113 collaborated with others in staging
a third inquest which upset the former findings and pronounced the body
that of Monro.

Readers could take their choice, declared Daniel Sprague of the
Album, but they must know that it was now purely a political question.
Editor O Reilly of the Advertiser branded the renewed agitation of the
Morgan question as an unprincipled attempt to inflame the public
solely for political ends. 114 Apparently the findings of the third inquest
came too late to reverse the trend, for the Antimason, Timothy Childs,
won his legislative seat. 115 Moreover the fortunes of the new political
faction were greatly enhanced by the national election one year off.

Indeed, the rising tide of Jacksonian sentiment was giving a new
significance and imparting a new intensity to political struggles through
out the land. Though his paper was still restrained by its Eastern
backer from taking a partisan stand, O Reilly himself assisted in organiz
ing a local Jackson committee, and at daybreak on January 8, 1828, a
military salute was fired from the Rochester bridge in commemoration
of Jackson s victory at New Orleans. 116 Sprague of the Album, abandon
ing his non-partisan stand, gave space to lengthy endorsements of Clay s
American System and bitter attacks on General Jackson, occasionally
pointing a scornful finger at "that little fellow" who, as editor of the
Advertiser, was so sympathetic to the Masons and so appreciative of the
theatrical troupe which had recently visited Rochester. 117 Frederick
Whittlesey, Scrantom s successor on the Republican, was diverted by
his Morgan committee associates from earlier Jacksonian leanings into
the new Antimasonic party. 118 Only Robert Martin of the Telegraph
remained steadfast to the formerly dominant Clintonians, vainly seeking
to disparage the Antimasonic uproar. Martin s embarrassment over
Clinton s split with Adams and growing favor for Jackson was removed
by the Governor s death in February, 1828. Thereupon the Daily
Telegraph stood forth as the leading administration paper, rallying
the support of the established villagers, especially after the Rochester

132 Bates Cook to Thurlow Weed, Lewiston, Oct 24, 30, 1827, Weed Letters,
Univ. Rochester.

118 Kelsey, Lives and Reminiscences, pp. 64-66; obituary in Union and Advertiser,
Nov. 18, 1867.

114 Advertiser, Nov. 3, 6, 1827.

^Alburn, Nov. 6, 20, 1827.

118 O Reilly Documents, No. 376.

117 Album, Nov. 27, Dec. 18, 25, 1827; Jan. 15, 1828.

118 Anti-Masonic Almanack for 1828 (Rochester: Edwin Scrantom, 1827).

SOCIAL AND POLITICAL UPHEAVAL 157

family was finally brought into the Adams fold by the President s timely
appointment of William B. Rochester as minister to Guatemala. But
Martin and his friends could only hope that the Antimasonic infection
would not prove fatal" 9

The virus of Antimasonry seemed to operate locally much after the
fashion of the well-known fever and ague. New victims of the malady
frequently wandered about as if dazed, failing to recognize old friends;
or they might suddenly be prostrated by fits of self-righteousness, such
as that experienced by Edward Giddins, a Niagara Mason whose con
fession was prompted by a refusal of his Masonic brethren to pay 3000
for Ms silence. Coming to Rochester late in 182 7, Giddins cooperated
with Edwin Scrantom, now an ex-Mason, in publishing an Anti-Masonic
Almanack in which the Giddins confession and an account of the abduc
tion, replete with all the gory details, crowded out the customary-
proverbs and rustic wit as well as allusions to the weather. Over ten
thousand copies of the inflammatory almanac, illustrated by scurrilous
wood cuts, were peddled far and wide by zealous party agents. 120

The time seemed at last ripe for the launching in February, 1828, of
Weed s Anti-Masonic Enquirer, a weekly devoted almost exclusively
to the establishment of a new political order free from the evils of
Masonry. Possibly the limited number of advertisements appearing in
the Enquirer reflected the hostility of the merchant class to the Anti-
masonic crusade, though several devoted supporters stood by, notably
Elder Bissell whose land holdings and six-day stage line were frequently
advertised. Generally three of the four pages were available for lengthy
speeches and sermons attacking the Masons, extended accounts of the
successive trials and abortive court actions which were still dragging
on, extracts from distant papers commenting favorably on the agita
tion, and any other items the diligent Enquirer could uncover con
cerning the abuses of Masonry. 121 However much it offended the sensi
bilities of moderate men, the weekly propaganda sheet was providing
Weed with "a reputation not much behind that of the great protestant
reformer," or at least that was how his Antimasonic friend in the legis
lature, Timothy Childs, put it. 122

*

The agitation was bearing its fruit bushels of knotty little spites, the
bitter products of the Antimasonic inquisition. When open political
lines appeared for the first time in the village election of 1828, the Anti-

119 Telegraph, Jan. 28, i828-February, 1829 ; McCarthy, "Antimasonic Party,"
Am. Hist. Assoc., Report, 1902, I, 367-559.

120 Anti-Masonic Almanack for 1828.

121 Anti-Masonic Enquirer, Mar. 4, 1828, and a score of other issues to Dec. 2,
1828.

122 Timothy CMlds to Weed, Albany, Mar. 27, 1828, Weed Letters.

158 THE WATER-POWER CITY

masonic ticket, to the surprise of many, carried the day. 133 The lodges
were called upon to surrender their charters, 124 and a legislative in
vestigation of the case was demanded by Timothy Childs. Several new
trials were instituted (that against the Reverend Francis Cuming of
St. Luke s was apparently groundless) f 3 * while the confessed accomplice,
Giddins, remained free to plan an even more invidious Almanac for
I829. 126 Charges that Weed had received $2400 from the friends of Clay
to finance Ms paper and that he had described the body tossed up by
the lake as "good enough Morgan until after the election/ 7 prompted a
suit for libel against Tucker and O Reilly. Though the suit was never
brought to trial, the redheaded Irishman, O Reilly, could never after
forget the bitterness of that season. 127

The Antimasons displayed fertility in the development of new appeals.
Fourth of July celebrations, previously non-political, in 1828 featured
open attacks on Masonry as un-American and anti-democratic. 128 The
contrary views of the Advertiser were dismissed as the "opinions of our
foreign editor," although O Reilly secured his naturalization papers
that July. 129 The pulpit, or at least a number of zealous clerics, rallied
to the task of identifying Masonry with irreligion, intemperance, and
other flagrant evils of the day. 130 A large painting, depicting the ritual
istic sacrifice of Morgan in a Masonic ceremony, appeared in the new
Exchange Building on the Rochester bridge. 131 The occasional resigna
tions of Masons seeking escape from persecution were hailed as con
fessions of guilt, and such individuals were joyfully welcomed as re
pentant sinners into the Antimasonic fold. 132 Finally a new political
weekly, the Monroe Democrat, was launched with the obvious design of
confusing unwary Democrats by its attacks on Jackson. 133

But the struggle proved in many respects a typical three-cornered
political contest with the ablest strategist favored to win. Weed and
O Reilly each received advice from state and national leaders, and each

^Enquirer, May 6, 1828.

124 Enquirer , Apr. 15, 29, 1828.

- 125 Enquirer, Apr. 15, Oct. 7, 1828; Advertiser and Telegraph, July 28, 1829.
The Reverend Cuming resigned at this time because of embarrassment over the
Morgan issue.

126 Anti-M asonic Almanack for 1829.

127 Advertiser, June 18, 30, July 4, 1828 ; "Good Enough Morgan," MS, O Reilly
Documents, Nos. 2110-2116; Weed, Autobiography, pp. 319-320, 350354.

v^LeRoy Gazette, July 10, 1828 (Samson Scrapbook, No. 45, p. 93) ; Morris,
William Morgan, pp. 249-308.

129 Telegraph, Sept. 9, 1828; O Reffly Doc., No. 663.

130 Joel Parker, Signs of the Times, pp. 11-16.

131 Enquirer, July 15, 1828.

^Enquirer, Oct. 20, 1829; Aug. 10, 17, 1830 (on Nov. i, 1831, the Enquirer
became the Inquirer }] Dec. 27, 1831; Rochester Daily Democrat, Mar. n, 1834.
133 Monroe Democrat, Sept. 2, 1828.

SOCIAL AND POLITICAL UPHEAVAL 159

endeavored to woo the Cllntonlan faction. 154 The Clintonians, how
ever, appeared to hold the upper hand during the summer. When they
staged a "Great Republican Meeting" in Christopher s long room late
in June, so large was the crowd that it became necessary to adjourn to
the Court House yard where fifteen hundred congregated in Rochester s
first open air mass meeting. The aged proprietor, serving as chairman,
indignantly repudiated Jackson, declaring that Republicans would not
support "the election of a chief magistrate for military renown only/
for that, he declared, would be "fatal to our freedom." Congressman
Daniel D. Barnard condemned the Antimasonic agitation of Weed and
Clay as an effort to split the Adams forces. 135 Local Jacksonians likewise
staged a Republican Meeting, though it was not as well attended as that
of the Adams supporters. 13 Meanwhile the Rochester Morgan com-
mittee called a state Antimasonic convention and, failing to agree with
the former Clintonians on a candidate for governor, nominated South-
wick for that post and Timothy Childs for Congress but switched at the
last moment from Clay to Adams for president. 137

The election brought together some strange bedfellows. Colonel
Rochester now found himself working again with Elisha Ely and
William Atkinson, and he could at last greet Elisha B. Strong with
some cordiality. St. Luke s members rejoiced in the strength of First
Presbyterian, and both smiled benignly at the Methodists and Baptists
and over the growth of Second and Third Presbyterian churches and
St. Paul s, for were they not practically all good Adams men some of
them a little overzealous about the evils of Masonry, but Adams men
none the less? 13S

The contest became more intense and bitter as the election ap
proached. When the Jackson- Van Buren supporters bought out Henry
Sleight s interest in the Advertiser in September, enabling it to step forth
as the unrestrained spokesman of that party, the deal was made the
occasion for an Antimasonic handbill in which Weed and his associates
accused Tucker, Gould, Bowman, Gardiner, and other local Jacksonians
of raising $1500 to bribe the electors of Monroe County a charge not
publicly retracted until eight months after the election. 139 Public ad-

134 B. SMdmore to Weed, New York, Aug. i, 1828; A. Erwin to Weed, Nash
ville, Tenn., Feb. 23, 1828, Weed Letters; William B. Lewis to O Reffly, Nashville,
July 30, 1828; E. Croswell to O ReiUy, Albany, Apr. 7, 1828, O Reilly Doc.

135 The Great Republican Meeting in Rochester (Rochester, 1828) ; Album,
July 8, 1828; Advertiser, July 2, 1828. O ReiUy attributed Colonel Rochester s
conversion to the Adams camp to the latter s appointment of William B. Rochester
to the Panama and Guatemala mission, reasoning which added to the bitterness of
that campaign.

136 Album, June 17, 1828.

"^Enquirer, Oct. 21, 1828; Weed, Autobiography, pp. 302-307, 353-354.

138 Telegraph, Oct. 18, 1828.

139 Handbill, Oct. 10, 1828; Advertiser, Oct. 16, 1828; O Reilly Doc. No. 2110.

160 THE WATER-POWER CITY

dresses to the electors by Matthew Brown, Timothy Childs, and Thuriow
Weed appeared in prominent five-inch columns of bold type in the
Enquirer, while the first local use of Sare headlines 140 sharply dif
ferentiated the political and typographical ingenuity of that sheet from
its more conservative rivals which still sandwiched their traditional
six- and eight-pica editorials in among the more legible advertisements.
Jackson supporters, not known as Masons, were derided as "Mason
Jacks," while Masons were challenged to wear their leather aprons. In
retaliation, Weed and his aides were followed by Jacksonians carrying
large shears and razors a burlesque of the alleged shearing of the
corpse to make it look like Morgan. 141 Heated tavern arguments fre
quently became violent, and a local blacksmith broke Frederick Whit-
tlesey s nose in a fracas at the polls. 142

When the Rochester vote was tallied, the political success of Weed
and his associates became clearly evident. Not only had the rural
sections swung almost solidly to the new party, but Gates and Brighton,
the two Rochester townships, were safely in the Antimasonic fold.
Childs was sent as the first Antimason to Washington and the party
increased its strength at Albany. 143 Yet despite the Genesee vote,
Van Buren was elected governor, and New York gave the majority of
its electoral support to the victorious Jackson.

Those who supposed that the controversy would subside after the
election were soon disillusioned. 144 Weed s consummate political skill
was, if possible, even more evident in the re-shuffling of forces following
the election than during the thick of the battle. Thus, while local
Jacksonians were busy negotiating a, consolidation of the Telegraph
with the Advertiser^ Weed collected new subscriptions for his Enquirer
from among the old readers of the Telegraph and the now defunct
Album, whose editor soon joined the new party. For the first time the
Antimasonic paper secured numerous advertisements. 146 And while
O Reilly was in Washington seeking local appointments for staunch
Jacksonians such as Elwood and Gould, but thereby offending the old
Republican postmaster, Abelard Reynolds, 147 Weed threw his support
to such moderate Jacksonians as his former friend, Addison Gardiner,

I4f >Enqwrer, Oct 21, 28, 1828.

141 "Reminiscences of Darius Perrin," Post-Express, Aug. 20, 1892.

143 T w Barnes, Memoir of Thuriow Weed (Boston, 1884), pp. 30-3-1.

^Enquirer, Nov. n, Dec. 2, 1828.

*** Brown, Anti-Masonic Excitement, pp. 228-239; Dixon Ryan Fox, The De
cline of Aristocracy in the Politics of New York (New York, 1919), pp. 337-351.

^Advertiser, Dec. 5, 1828; Jan. 29, 1829.

^Enquirer, Dec. 2, 1828; and subsequent issues.

147 Enquirer, Apr. 6, 1830; Abelard Reynolds statement (photostat), Reynolds
Papers, No. 787; Petition to retain Reynolds, Reynolds Papers, No. 728,

VIII MAP OP MONROE OUNIY, CREATED IN 1821

SOCIAL AND POLITICAL UPHEAVAL 161

thus securing the appointment of judges and other local officials who
would in time become more congenial to his leadership, 148

Meanwhile the crusade against Freemasonry continued. The issue
invaded a meeting of the Rochester Presbytery in February, 1829, and
pastors affiliated with the organization were called upon to renounce
their vows or surrender their churches. 149 Apparently St. Luke s made
no such request, but Francis Cuming tendered his resignation in order
to safeguard the parish from obloquy. 150 A new weekly, The Craftsman,
started with the avowed purpose of opposing the inquisition, made little
headway against the prevailing tide. 151

Finally, in a determined effort at conciliation, the ten lodges in
Monroe County, "after deliberate discussion and anxious reflection . . .
unanimously arrived at the conclusion that Public Opinion at this time
unequivocally calls upon them to renounce their Masonic rights." 152

It is not to be disguised [their announcement continued], that this con
cession has cost us a considerable effort, particularly while smarting under
the lash of persecution and proscription; but appealing as we do to the
justice of an enlightened community it is due to the dignity of the tribunal
before which we are thrown to stifle the suggestions of private grief at the
shrine of public duty. . . . That a virtuous indignation should have been
roused by the commission of the offense in question, was both natural and
laudable ... but the evil to which this feeling has been liable is to con
found the innocent with the guilty. . . . Under its baleful influence Reason
seems to have lost her empire and Charity to have resigned her seat. . . .

Our appeal is to the Friends of Peace and Good Order; and if the waters
of strife are to be poured out, without reserve, embittering all the relations
of life if an unrelenting crusade is to be carried on against a numerous and
respectable portion of our fellowmen, merely on account of their speculative
opinions the responsibility will not rest upon us.

Seldom have more lofty sentiments emerged from a bitter quarrel.
While touches of melodrama were present together with some political
chicanery, it was not to be denied that the villagers who signed the
address William B. Rochester, Vincent Mathews, Jacob Gould, and
Robert Martin among others displayed a maturity of spirit unknown
to the Rochester of a few years before. Several cubits had been added
to the stature of the community during the decade of intermittent
internal strife and booming growth. Perhaps the fact that the rate of

148 Weed, Autobiography, pp. 337-340.
^Enquirer, Feb. 24, 1829.
^Advertiser, July 28, 1829.

151 The Craftsman, Feb. 10, 1829.

152 Address of Freemasons of Monroe County to the Public on Returning their
Charters (Rochester, 1829),

i&2 THE WATER-POWER CITY

its physical expansion was already tapering off helped to contribute to
the increasing sobriety, but rarely would Rochester again be stirred to
the excesses of the controversy of 1827 and 1828.

To be sure, the Antimasons could not so readily drop their advantage.
The return of the charters was hailed as a triumph for that party and
held up as a goal to be sought by more distant communities into which
the party now advanced with expanding ambition. 153 Even in Rochester
the issue was not permitted to rest, and in the legislative campaign of
1829 charges of complicity in the Morgan case were again leveled at
any who dared oppose the Antimasonic candidates. Jacob Gould was
singled out on this occasion for the alleged offense of diverting Masonic
charity funds to the abductors in order to assist their escape. 154 Gould s
suit against Weed for the slander ultimately secured a judgment of
$4OO, 155 but meanwhile that political genius had won his local campaign
for a legislative seat at Albany and was seldom thereafter to return to
the mill town on the Genesee. 156

r, Mar. 28, Apr. 7, 1829; Feb. 16, 1830; Weed, Autobiography f , 336-
349!.; McCarthy, "Antimasonic Party," pp. 391-456; Ludlum, Social Ferment in
Vermont j 1701-1850, pp. 86-133.

^Enquirer, Oct. 6, 13, 20, 27, 1829.

155 Enqwrer, Sept. 20, 27, 1831; Inquirer, Dec. 6, 1831; Mar. 13, 1832.

156 Enqwr er, Nov. 17, 1829; May n, 30, July 6, 1830.

CHAPTER VII

CREATING A CITY

1829-1834 *

THE EARLY THIRTIES presented Rochester with two major and ex
tremely complicated situations: a sharp decline in its rate of
growth and inadequate institutions. Fairly successful adjustments
were made within the next five years, although the community s at
tention was more constantly focussed on yet another matter: the moral
responsibilities and social behavior of its members. The westward sweep
of religious wildfire, kindled in central New York in 1824, reached
Rochester by the end of the decade, displacing the Antimasonic furor of
the late twenties with religious and social ferment. If much of the
evangelistic ardor of these years was spent by 1834, when Rochester, the
Flour City, emerged as the economic capital of a flourishing region, the
community had at least begun to sense new democratic and humani
tarian opportunities.

WAY STATION FOR WESTWARD MIGRANTS

By 1829, Rochester had to a considerable extent realized the early
commercial advantages of its site. The stream of migrants brought by
the canal continued to sweep westward, creating new boom towns further
inland. Yet the population sources of the East were by no means ex
hausted, and large migrations were just beginning to stem from Europe,
so that, in losing its early position as the leading market town of the
Northwestern frontier, Rochester became a major provisioning station
for the ever swelling westward movement. Though the unprecedented
rate of its earlier population increase was not maintained, as soon as
the shock of its slower pace was absorbed, healthy growth returned.

The disillusionment of 1829 proved in many respects the dominant
factor in the town s history during the period. Not only was the problem
of achieving a stable community complicated by social and spiritual

l l am here borrowing the title of an unpublished M.A. thesis written at the
University of Rochester in 1936 by Mr. Whitney R. Cross, archivist of the Western
New York History Collection at Cornell University. The occasional references
made below to his "Creating a City: The History of Rochester from 1824 to
1834," do not adequately suggest my considerable indebtedness to his excellent
study for its factual and suggestive survey of the period.

1 64 THE WATER-POWER CITY

stresSj but the process of scaling down inflated property values proved
a slow and painful experience. Many residents were prompted to pull
up stakes and resume the march westward. Nevertheless, all vacancies
were quickly overcrowded by newcomers bringing varied skills and fresh
optimism, Moreover, the rapidly shifting scene further hastened the
development of an urban economic pattern.

The limits of Rochester s geographic horizon first began to appear
when the boundless opportunities of the Mississippi Valley and upper
Great Lakes country developed in the early thirties. The multiplica
tion of steam vessels on these two great water routes 2 quickly over
shadowed the canal and river facilities of Rochester. Attempts to im
prove the latter resulted, and a revival of Lake Ontario s trade occurred,
but the brighter prospects of several Western river and lake ports could
not be denied. 3 The opening of the Welland Canal in 1829 and the
completion that year of the Oswego Canal provided an alternate water
route to the West, though its challenge to the Erie was not immediately
felt. 4 Not only did the migrants from the East as well as the overflow
of that section s capital and enterprise push on past the Genesee mill
town, but many of Rochester s residents and some of its capital also
joined the trek.

Local papers gave frequent notice to this surging movement. From
Buffalo came a graphic account in 1833:

Canal boats filled with emigrants, and covered with goods and furniture, are
almost hourly arriving. . . . Several steamboats and vessels daily depart
for the far west, literally crammed with masses of living beings to people
those regions. Some days, near a thousand thus depart. Hundreds and hun
dreds of horse wagons arrive every spring and fall with emigrants from our
own state. 5

2 James L. Barton, Lake Commerce (Buffalo, 1846), pp. 6-8. A steamboat
association was formed in 1833, employing n steamboats valued at $360,000 on the
lakes west of Buffalo. Herbert and Edward Quick, Mississippi Steamboatin : A
History of Steamboating on the Mississippi and Its Tributaries (New York, 1926),
pp. 100-104, and passim.

& Hunt s Merchants Magazine, XXVI (1852), 633-634. None of the lake ports
quite equalled Rochester in population by 1840 but all of them grew more rapidly
during the thirties: Buffalo from 8,668 to 18,213; Detroit from 2,222 to 9,102;
Cleveland from 1,076 to 6,071; and Chicago from a few foresters to 4,470. On
the other hand, the river ports, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Louisville, and New
Orleans, were already well ahead of Rochester and enjoying a vibrant growth,
while St. Louis jumped from 6,694 to 16,469. Rochester, it should be noted, grew
from 9,207 to 20,191 during the thirties. The U. S. Census gave the total popula
tion of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan in 1830 as 1,470,018, and by 1840
it had grown to 2,893,783.

4 D. G. Creighton, The Commercial Empire of the St. Lawrence, 1760-1850,
pp. 247-252 ; Noble E. Whitford, History of the Canal System . . . of New York,
chap, vii, "The Oswego Canal."

5 Genesee Farmer, June 9, 1832.

CREATING A CITY 165

Never before [the same observer wrote a year later] has there been such
a crowd of emigration to "the great west" as during this spring. It seems as
though the whole eastern country was pouring out its millions for Ohio and
Michigan. . . .

I have this spring seen great numbers of good, substantial people from
Ontario, Seneca, Livingston, and the central counties of Western New-York,
who are emigrating to the west with their families , more than I have ever
known before. They say that they find no difficulty in selling their farms, and
at good prices too. 6

The call of the West was echoing through Rochester in these years.
Occasional meetings discussed plans for Rochester colonies in Michigan
or Illinois/ and although local papers neglected to describe the de
partures, an astounding number of residents did pull out for the West.
Approximately 70 per cent of those listed in the village directory of
1827 moved on before the next directory list appeared in 1834. The
migrants were most numerous among the boarders, as only 22 per cent
of that group remained, in comparison with 36 per cent of the house
holders. Yet so rapid was the influx of new arrivals from the East that
the total number of names increased from 2,306 to 3,213, while the
population mounted from 9,489 to 12,289 during the same period. 8 Even
a conservative estimate, heavily weighting the size of the families of
those who remained, would class approximately three-fourths of the
Rochesterians of 1834 as newcomers within the previous five years.

Back of the rapid turnover was not only the persuasive call of the
West but a widespread disillusionment among the villagers. Those with
out property were the first to move, stimulated no doubt by the slack
employment during winter months when the canal stood idle. With the
desire to escape one s creditors spurring migration, local justices found
themselves overburdened with suits for the collection of small debts or
the detention of defaulters. Over 700 such unfortunates were "confined
to the jail limits" in 1828.*

The task of bringing suit was frequently more troublesome than
the debt justified. In an attempt to devise a more effective scheme for
collecting loans, a group of creditors formed an association to compile
and publish each week a list of the names of small debtors. Aroused
and indignant at this prescriptive scheme, a large protest meeting
organized a Committee of Equal Rights and Exact Justice to battle the
"Shylock Association," as the opposition was dubbed. When the com-

6 Genesee Farmer, May 18, 1833. See also Barton, Lake Commerce, pp. 7-8. In
1833 the steamboat association which operated n boats out of Buffalo carried
42,956 persons west and 18,529 back to Buffalo.

7 Craftsman, May 5, 1829; Observer, Aug. n, 1831; Gem, May 14, 1836.

8 Rochester Directory (1827), (1834). Out of 487 names taken from various
sections of the 1827 Directory, only 29.6 per cent were found listed in 1834.

9 Craftsman, Feb. 24, Mar. 10, 1829.

i66 THE WATER-POWER CITY

mittee quickly enrolled 225 citizens into a Mutual Association pledged
to fight for the abolition of imprisonment for debt and for a curb on
the use of due bills in wage payments, 10 the sixty "Shylocks" hastily
disbanded, private charity wafs stimulated, and more attention given to
the distribution of poor relief as the community awoke to the economic
facts of the situation. 11

Though the conflict was a local expression of a state-wide con
troversy, 12 the bitterness of the struggle in Rochester was increased by
the slowing tempo of the community s growth. The use of due bills,
which generally shaved the recipient s real wages by a discount of 20 per
cent, was partially restrained for a time. 13 Still greater success marked
the agitation against imprisonment for debt a policy as difficult to
administer as its effect was unfortunate. Thus 628 small debtors were
committed to jail in Monroe County during 1830 for sums totalling
$6399. Court charges added another 20 per cent to the bill, not counting
the expense for the 130 who served an average of three and a half days
in jail. Of the list, 53 were held for debts under two dollars, and 148
for debts between two and five dollars; the plaintiffs relented in 181
cases, paying the charges themselves; only 43 were found able and
willing to settle their obligations in full. 14 Such a record hardly recom
mended the system to public favor. The combined agitation of the
Mutual Association and several local editors helped to speed the state
wide campaign toward successful legislative action in 1831, curtailing
the imprisonment of debtors for sums under fifty dollars. 15

While the brunt of the recession was borne by the poor, several of
the more substantial citizens were also pressed to the wall. Active land
speculation in the Genesee had not only inflated values but also saddled
many with pledges they could not make good. Numerous lots on the
east side at the main falls and at Carthage Landing were sold for taxes
in i830, 16 and although but three in the village suffered that fate, prices
tumbled 50 per cent in cases where investors attempted to consolidate
their holdings. 17 Foreclosure actions, which had numbered only five

10 Minutes and Proceedings of the Mutual Association of the ViUage of Rochester
together with Us Constitution and a List of Members of the Shylock Association
(Rochester, 1829).

^Advertiser, Dec. 28, 1830; Jan. n, 183-1.

^Richard W. Leopold, Robert Dale Owen: A Biography (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1940), pp. 85-99; Alice J. G. Perkins and Theresa Wolfson,
Frances Wright: Free Enquirer (New York, 1939), pp. 245-270; Fox, Decline
of Aristocracy in the Politics of New York, pp. 352-359.

13 See below, p. 220.

^Craftsman, Feb. 9, 1831.

^Advertiser, Jan. 22, 27, Mar. 27, Dec. 28, 1830; Jan. i, 1831; Rochester
Republican, Feb. 2, 1830; Jan. 31, 1832; Rochester Observer, Jan. 29, 1830.

16 List of Lands to be Sold in April, 1830, for Arrears of Taxes (Albany, 1829) .

17 A. Reynolds to Ezra Platt, Rochester, Sept. 6, 1831, Reynolds Papers.

CREATING A CITY 167

between 1825 and 1828^ jumped to tMrteen in 1829; continuing to
mount until they reached forty-nine in iSj^. 18 These were county
figures, but most of them involved properties of considerable value in
the Rochester vicinity. Even the mightiest were humbled, as J. M.
Schennerhorn, younger brother of Abraham the banker, noted in a letter
to Ms wife:

Times have been distressing here in all respects, business is yet hard, losses
and failures not uncommon William Atkinson and Elisha Johnson have
failed, the former for $60,000 or $80,000 and the latter in consequence of
endorsements for him Many others [losses] are looked for & [some] have
failed but they are of no great consequence My losses have increased a
little lately Economy will have to be the order of the day with us. ...
Peaches are very plenty and very fine here. 19

In a limited respect Rochester s economic doldrums were self-imposed.
Not only had the speculative ardor of the mid-twenties overshot the
mark, but the reactions proved equally excessive. One editor com
mented in the summer of 1832, after the scourge of cholera had been
added to the town s misfortunes, "When we pass through the streets of
our once flourishing village, we are generally met by men (if we happen
to see anybody) with long faces." The chief evil, he felt ? was not the
disease itself but the "Cholera Sermons" in which the clergy described
the disease as a sign of God s wrath sent as a chastisement upon the
worldly townsfolk. "Consternation/ 7 he added, "seized the inhabitants
and . . . hundreds fled." 20 Fires and floods, in part a result of the
lack of precaution, further added to the tale of woes. Nevertheless,
courage slowly returned and necessary readjustments in rents and lot
values were gradually made, so that one visitor in the early thirties
could report that "the town is rallying." 21

-<

That it was a case of gloom and hardship in the midst of plenty,
most travelers through the blooming Genesee agreed. 22 An early dis-

18 "Notices of Pendency of Actions in the 8th District," Monroe County Court
House.

19 J. M. Schermerhorn to his wife, Rochester, Sept. 22, 1832, Schermerhorn
Letters, photostat copies secured by the Roch. Pub. Library through the courtesy
of Mrs. Rudolph Stanley-Brown, Wash., D. C. See also Herbert B. Howe,
Jedediah Barber (New York, 1939) , pp. 142-148.

20 Liberal Advocate, Aug. 18, Sept. 15, Oct. 6, 1832.

21 Adam Ferguson, Practical Notes Made during a Tour of Canada and Parts
of the United States in 1831 (Edinburgh, 1833)) P- *75- "Rochester has been sub
ject to fluctuations in its progress for some years back, and capitalists have been
supposed to retard it by demanding extravagant prices and rents for house-lots
and buildings. This, however, must soon cure itself, and already, I am told, the
town is rallying."

22 R. H, S., Pub., XVm, 1-117; Genesee Farmer, Apr. 21, 1832.

i6S THE WATER-POWER CITY

covery that only the Imaginary and none of the town s real advantages
had been lost brought renewed courage. The commercial facilities were
limited, but they might be improved; the flour market was subject to
fluctuations, but Its profits were frequently quite large; real estate was
not the bonanza It had first appeared, but returns were forthcoming as
soon as homes or shops were erected ; and meanwhile a steady stream of
migrants crowded the taverns and provision stores with customers. Only
enterprise and credit were needed, and they soon appeared in con
siderable abundance,

The improvement of Its commercial facilities was one of Rochester s
constant concerns. Appeals for aid sent to both the state and federal
authorities finally prompted the latter to undertake improvements at
the Genesee Port in 1829. Two log piers nearly half a mile in length
were constructed, providing a 1 2-foot channel sufficient to accommodate
the largest boats on the lake. 28 The state had its hands full keeping
the Erie in repair, and in 1833, when flood damage made it necessary
to reconstruct a section of the canal east of Rochester, the opportunity
was seized to reline the aqueduct. As the stone of the original structure
had already begun to disintegrate, the need for a new aqueduct ap
peared, but that improvement and the desired enlargement of the entire
canal were put off for several years. 24

The one new development in Rochester s transport facilities during
the period was the construction of a horse railroad connecting with the
lake port at Carthage. Agitation for such a line, started in 1825, pro
cured a suitable charter in 1831, when the $30,000 capital of the
Rochester Canal and Railroad Company was quickly subscribed by
prominent east-siders. Elisha Johnson built the short three-mile line
commencing at the east end of the aqueduct and following Water and
St. Paul streets north to the settlement at the lower falls. 25 The opening
of the road on September 27, 1832, afforded a gala occasion. Excited
villagers vied with each other for seats at 12 J^ cents in one of the horse-
drawn "pleasure carriages" or crowded into the more numerous open
cars built to carry produce. The Rochester Band, packed into one of
the open cars, supplied musical accompaniment, but the beauty of the
gorge, appearing through the trees from time to time as the cars skirted
the edge of the cliff, and the thought that Rochester at last had con
venient access to Its lake port provided sufficient justification for high
spirits. A "sumptuous entertainment prepared in Mathies* customary

23 Anti-Masonic Enquirer, May 18, 1830; Apr. 12, 1831; Edwin A. Fisher, "En
gineering and Public Works in the City of Rochester," R. H. S., Pub., XII, 231.

^Assembly Documents (1833), vol. II, no. 26, p. u; no. 36, p. 9.

^Monroe RepubUcan, Dec. 20, 1825; Anti-Masonic Enquirer, Feb. 15, Mar. 29,
1831; Advertiser, Mar. 30, 1831; Roch. Republican, Aug. 21, 1832; Senate Journal
(1831), pp. 44, 54, 148; Assembly Journal (1831), pp. 346, 469.

CREATING A CITY 169

style at the Clinton House 17 climaxed the celebration. 26 The line was
finally completed the next spring when two inclined plane sections were
ready for use, facilitating access to the docks in the gorge. 27

Several other railroad schemes were already under consideration.
The merchants across the river, observing the progress of the Carthage
Hne ; began to lay plans for a Rochester and Charlotte Railroad Com
pany, though the protests of east-siders delayed the grant of a charter
until 1835, when the scheme was abandoned. 28 Meanwhile, two more
ambitious projects were being formulated, one to connect with Dansville
and the Susquehanna valley ; and another to head southwest through
Batavia to the Allegheny River. When the Dansville and the Tonawanda
companies were incorporated in 1832, most of the stock was quickly
subscribed in Rochester, but various factors led to the abandonment
of the Dansville project, while construction of the Tonawanda line did
not commence until the fall of 1834.^

More immediate commercial gains were secured by improving several
of the old highways and other trade facilities. A new plan increased the
efficiency of local road labor, but efforts to secure additional state roads
for the area were defeated, although the Buffalo road out of Rochester
through Churchville was at last designated as a post road. 30 While
agitation for a canal up the Genesee Valley made little headway, small
sums were provided for river improvement. 31 A company, organized to
build and operate a steamboat on the river above Rochester, launched
the Genesee hi 1834. Unfortunately, as in the case of its predecessor on
the river and similar experiments on the canal, the services of the
steamer were of brief duration. 32 River boatmen had to be content
with improved keelboats, but meanwhile they made certain that the
dams and bridges which were constructed from time to time should
not obstruct their path. 33

Commercial prospects on the lake improved somewhat after the
modification of the British corn laws in 1831 and the opening of the

28 Gem, Sept. 25, 1832; Rock. Republican, Oct. 2, 1832; J. M. Schermerhoni to
Ms wife, Rochester, Sept. 27, 1832, Schermerhoni Letters.

2* Advertiser, Feb. 21, 1833.

^Assembly Journal (1832), pp. 109, 348, 466; Senate Journal (1833), PP- 101,
118, 129; Assembly Journal (1835), pp. 102, 284, 343, 864.

^Senate Journal (1832), pp. 51, 102, 129-130, 133; Assembly Journal (1832),
pp. 41, 51, 68, 113; Advertiser, Feb. 19, Mar. 14, 1831; May i, 1832; Feb. i,
1833; Sept 30, 1834; Inquirer, Aug. 20, Sept. 17, 1833.

30 The Revised Act of the Legislature on Highways and Bridges (Rochester,
1829) ; Assembly Journal (1831), p. 45; (1833), pp. 234, 256, 807; (1834), pp. 247,

389, 545-

31 Senate Documents (1834), No. 55, pp. 10-11.

^Assembly Journal (1834), pp. 259, 922, 982, 1017; Craftsman, May 29,
1830; Democrat, June 30, 1835.
^Assembly Doc. (1834), No. 115*

iyo THE WATER-POWER CITY

Welland Canal. Exports from the Genesee reached the high total of
$807^710 in 1833, mostly heading westward to supply the new settle
ments on the frontier. The weekly calls of four steamboats operating
on Late Ontario at this time provided excellent service, more, ap
parently, than the trade could long support. 34 Indeed, the farms and
mills of the West soon captured Rochester s provision market in that
region, and Lake Ontario trade, despite the modification of the Ameri
can tariff after 1832, failed to keep pace with the growing activity on
the upper lakes. 35 Canal shipments, on the contrary, continued a steady
rise, except in 1832, when the restraints applied by a shipping monopoly
produced a slight decrease. 36 Rochester maintained its leading position
as a toll collector, second only to Albany, and in 1830, when the Canal
Board moved to increase the toll charges, local shippers took the lead
in a successful campaign to defeat the proposal. 37 The argument that
trade would be diverted to Montreal was persuasive at this time and
again in 1833 when it prompted a 25 per cent reduction in tolls on the
Erie. 38

Rochester was chiefly interested in the canal as a flour transport, for
that article still comprised the canaPs leading eastbound cargo, equal
ling all others in value in i833, 39 with Rochester as the major source of
these shipments. Local merchants early ventured into the carrying
trade. Boatyards appraised at $25,000 turned out craft to the value of
$80,000 a year by 1833, when investments in boat lines totalled $74,000,
requiring a capital of $136,000 for their operation. 40

An attempt to coordinate these various Rochester interests resulted
in the organization of a canal boat combine in 1832. The major ob
jectives were to control the flow of western wheat and to prevent cut
throat competition between rival boat lines. Protests were soon heard,
both from Eastern millers who could not get adequate supplies of wheat,
and from Western grain growers forced to sell at prices fixed by the
combine. The farmers of Monroe County were particularly outspoken,
complaining that they were forced to accept the prices offered by
Rochester millers since forwarders would not carry their wheat to
Eastern markets. Wheat prices in Rochester fell 12 to 1 8 per cent below

34 George H. Harris, "Early Shipping on the Lower Genesee River: Reminis
cences of Captain Hosea Rogers," R. H. S., Pub., IX, 105; Directory ( 1834), p. i
and adv.

above notes 2 and 4; Frank W. Taussig, The Tariff History of the United
States (8th ed.; New York, 1931), pp. 89-108.

^Assembly Doc. (1831), No. 38, p. u; (1833), No. 36A.

^Advertiser and Telegraph, Apr. n, 1830.

^Assembly Journal (1833), p. 559 ; Assembly Doc. (1833), No. 320.

^Timothy Ktkin, A Statistical View of the Commerce of the United States of
America (New Haven, 1835), P- 577-

^Directory (1834), P- *

CREATING A CITY 171

normal, whether because of the monopoly, or the inflow of western
wheat, was not clear. The boat lines, however, lost an estimated $12,000
in revenue, thus disrupting the combine and defeating the first attempt
to stabilize the price of lour and assure Rochester millers a monopoly
over the industry. 41

Despite wide fluctuations in the price of flour ** and the consequent
insecurity of such investments, milling had become the dominant in
dustry, vying with real estate as a basis for social position if not for
profits. The wheat resources of the Genesee, already supplemented by
the rapidly increasing supplies of Western grain, 43 doubled the flour
output of Rochester between 1826 and 1833. The 300,000 barrels
shipped in the latter year comprised nearly a third of the flour carried
down the Hudson that season, establishing Rochester s preeminence in
the state, though larger quantities of flour were still produced in the
vicinity of both Baltimore and Richmond. 44 Eighteen mills, equipped
with a total of 78 run of stones, assured the town a large cash return.
If a major share went to the farmer for his wheat, it was frequently
spent in Rochester stores. Four millraces provided a total of 3,400
horsepower to the numerous mills and other establishments, though only
a fraction of the potential energy was as yet developed. 45

There was more than gold in the heavy barrels rolled out of Rochester,
for they spread the growing reputation of the Flour City. The attention
given by frequent visitors to the new large mills at the upper falls,
notably the Hervey Ely null on the east side and the Beach mill across
the river, helped to enhance the fame of Rochester flour. 46 The leading
local millwright, Robert M. Dalzell, equipped these huge establishments
with machinery developed some years before in Pennsylvania. 47 The

^Assembly Doc. (1833), No. 320; Rock. Republican (extra), Sept 1832;
Genesee Farmer, Oct. 6, 1832; Advertiser, Jan. n, Feb. u, 1833. It is interesting
to note Oliver Culver among the protesting farmers, while the millers and for
warders involved in the combine included E. B. Strong, Benjamin Campbell,
Hervey Ely, Charles J. Hill, T. H. Rochester, and Jonathan Child among others.

^Hunt s Merchants Magazine, XIH, 290; XV, 520; XXX, 236. Tables of
flour prices in New York, Rochester, and Baltimore show fluctuations within
each year of $i or more, and a decline of from $8 to $4 per. bbl. during this period.

^Advertiser, Feb. i, 1832. Shipments from the West mounted from 4,000 to
185,000 bushels between 1829 and 1831.

^Directory (1834), P- *j Hunt s Merchants 3 Magazine, XVIII, 223; Charles B.
Kuhlmann, The Development of the Flour-Milling Industry in the United States
(Cambridge, 1929), pp. 43-58. Baltimore was without question the leading flour
market, but apparently Rochester milled as much as if not more than was pro
duced by mills within the immediate vicinity of either Baltimore or Richmond.

45 Samson Scrapbook, No. 57, p. 9, Roch. Hist. Soc.

48 "Foreign Travel Notes on Rochester and the Genesee Country Before 1840,"
R. H. S., Pub., XVIH, 31, 46, 48, 97, 99, 107-108.

4T Kuhlmann, Flour-Milling Industry, pp. 96-98; Dictionary of American Bi
ography, V, 48.

172 TEE WATER-POWER CITY

grain was carried up in biickets from the canal boats to the top of the
four- or five-story mills, whence it descended through the successive
stages of cleansing, grinding, cooling, sifting, and packing until the
product rolled out in sealed barrels onto the docks without once having
been touched by the miller s hand. There was something almost magical
about the mills of Rochester or so it appeared even to travelers from
Europe in the early thirties. 48

A few marked changes developed in the secondary industries of
Rochester. The asheries were giving place to more economical uses for
the depleted forests; 49 one cotton factory closed down as cheap products
began to arrive from the mills of New England, but a carpet factory of
considerable size was established in the Globe Building, and a second
cotton factory struggled along for a time; ^ two or three sawmills be
came furniture factories and a carriage factory was established; 51 the
tanneries expanded with the increased activity of stock fanners up the
valley, while one large slaughterhouse was equipped to handle 75 head
a day in i832. 52 Possibly the largest of several machine shops, producing
tools for farm or factory use, was that advertised by Matthew Brown
in 1830 as equipped with five fires, two trip hammers, two grindstones,
water-power bellows, a power machine shop, and a furnace boasting the
greatest blast in the state. By 1833 the metal industry was turning out
products valued at $80,000, including fire engines and, in 1834, grain
cutters as well. 53

The opening of two large and elegant hotels made Rochester a
favorite stopping place for the increased number of merchants journey
ing to and from the expanding West. 54 For a short time the Eagle Tavern
at the Four Corners and the Rochester House overlooking the canal at
Exchange Street ranked as the best west of" Albany, though by the mid-
thirties Buffalo was to capture that distinction from Rochester. The
renovation of several older taverns and the operation of two as "temper
ance houses" assured travelers of a wide choice of accommodations. 55
But local merchants, eager to reap profits from the passing throng, pro
tested violently when auctioneers from New York invaded the town,

48 Watt Stewart, "A Spanish Traveler Visits Rochester," R. H. S., Pub., XVIH,
107-^108,

48 Gem, May 4, 1833; Democrat, Jan. n, 1843.

^Roch. Republican, Aug. 18, 1829; Advertiser, Mar. 5, 1832; Mar. 19, 1833;
Democrat, Dec. 9, 1834.

^Advertiser and Telegraph, Mar. 26, 1830.

^Advertiser, Mar. 12, 1832; Directory (1834), p. i.

^Advertiser, Dec. 25, 1830; Genesee Farmer, Mar. 3, 1832; Directory (-1834),
p. i; R. H. S., Pub., XVIH, 108, no.

**Gem, July 2, 1831; Advertiser, May n, 1830.

^Advertiser, June n, 28, 1832; Roch. Republican, July 3, 1832, Sept. 27, 1836.

CREATING A CITY 173

slashing prices in order to dispose of their surplus stock quickly. 56
Though efforts to curb the practice met with some success 7 the reputa
tion of the town for abundant supplies of cheap goods was meanwhile
enhanced, and with the increased local output Rochester s function as
a provision station for westward migrants was established/ 7

-<

But these varied enterprises were embarrassed by shortages of credit.
The Bank of Rochester, declaring an extra dividend of 10 per cent in
1828 (a total of 19 per cent on its capital that year), candidly withdrew
its objections to the chartering of a second bank* Many residents com
plained that one bank could not handle a quarter of the business of the
village, forcing resort to banks in Canandaigua or further east. 58 When
a charter was finally secured for the Bank of Monroe, the institution,
allowed a capital of $300,000, speedily organized with Abraham Scher-
merhorn, just back from a business trip to London, as president. 59
New England investors supplied most of the capital, but considerable
blocks of stock were subscribed in Canandaigua and other New York
towns. 60 The new bank, leasing the choice corner rooms in the new Eagle
Hotel at the Four Corners, thus acquired the most favored site in town.

Even the new bank did not long satisfy local demands. Disappoint
ment was expressed when the Bank of the United States located a
branch in Buffalo instead of Rochester, though William B. Rochester
was named a director of that branch. 61 Applications for a Mechanic s
Bank were repeatedly defeated in the legislature by a failure to secure
the necessary two-thirds vote, 62 but a charter was granted for a savings
bank established by the directors of the two local banks for the con
venience of those able to lay by small sums from their earnings. 63
Rochester investors cooperated in establishing banks at Geneseo,

** Advertiser, June 24, 27, 1828; Feb. n, 15, 1831; Rock. Republican, Jan. 19,
Feb. 16, 1830; Assembly Journal (1831), pp. 202, 222; Assembly Doc. (1831),
No. 151 ; Fred M. Jones, Middlemen in the Domestic Trade of the United States:
1800-1860 (Urbana, Illinois, 1937) , pp. 35-43-

57 Gem, Aug. 13, 1831; Directory (1834)- Kearney s City Clothing Emporium
and Alling s Boot and Shoe Store, both on Exchange St., advertised large stocks
of ready-made articles for the speedy accommodation of clients unable to await
the services of a tailor or shoemaker. Their products were the cheap and crude
articles produced in the East for rough wear as laboring clothes, not the ready-
made clothes of a later date.

58 Telegraph, Nov. 17, 1828.

59 Advertiser, July 30, 1828; Enquirer, Apr. 28, 1829; Advertiser and Telegraph,
Oct. 31, 1829; Jan. 5, 1830.

60 Assembly Doc. (1833), No. 89, pp. 40-42; Directory (1834), pp. 6-7.
^Advertiser and Telegraph, Sept. 21, 1829; Roch. Republican, Oct. 13, 1829.
^Assembly Journal (1831), p. 232; (1832), pp. 252, 726; (1833), p. 5*7-
^Assembly Journal (1831), pp. 226, 630; Roch. Republican, Mar. 2, 1830;

Advertiser, Dec. n, 1830; Feb. 4, 1831,

i 7 4 THE WATER-POWER CITY

Batavia, and Lockport in these years, and some local funds drifted west
to Detroit in search of advantages there, though the Flour City s needs
were by no means satisfied. 64

Popular attitudes toward banks were still strongly flavored with
politics. The struggle between the Jackson forces and the Second Bank
of the United States tended to rally all anti- Jackson groups around that
institution, yet the probability that increased advantages would fall to
local banks on the dissolution of the Bank of the United States swung
the two banks of Rochester (as well as several in New York City and
elsewhere) to Jackson s side, 65 Local Jackson forces and the bankers as
well supported Van Buren s attempt to secure a sound state banking
policy through the safety fund law of i829. 66 On the other hand, all
Rochester interests joined in protest against the legislative resistance to
appeals for additional banks in the western counties. The Jacksonian
Advertiser in 1833, after a review of the record of the six banks west of
Canandaigua (whose total capitalization of $1,150,000 had to serve a
population of 400,000), concluded that "it is the duty of the Legislature
to double the capital of the West at once."

Let us not be told [the editor continued] that this increase of capital will
produce over-trading and end in the bankruptcy of the banks. Such an argu
ment may do for many of the older and interior counties of the state where
there is little to carry to market and where all things are stationary. . . .
Experience has satisfied us that they have no application here. The resources
of this country are not half developed. Everything in the west is on the road
to improvement. Capital creates business, and here business sustains itself
and produces profit to those who carry it on. Look at the fact that in 1820
there was not $250,000 in these nine counties. In 1829, 30 and 31 it was in
creased to the sum above mentioned [$1,150,000]. We were then told by
interested bankers at the east that we should be ruined, and bankruptcy of
the banks -would follow. They are now all in a sound state, have made
enormous profits, and we do not believe their whole losses have amounted
to $20,000. . . .

At Buffalo we notice applications for more bank capital. It is needed let
them have it. B. is a great place and is constantly increasing. Her business
would soon be doubled if she had capital proportionate to her resources. . . .

In Rochester, too, we understand more capital is to be applied for. It
should be cheerfully accorded. Rochester is the Manchester of the West.
Give her capital. Her enterprise will ensure a good result. 67

64 Advertiser, June 10, 1830; Nov. 26, 1833.

65 J. G. Bennett, "Diary of a Journey through New York," Folio 19, MS in
New York Public Library; R. C. H. Catterall, The Second Bank of the United
States (Chicago, 1903), pp. 164-168.

66 Advertiser and Telegraph, Sept. 16, 1829. See also Robert E. Chaddock, The
Safety Fund Banking System in New York: 182^-1866 (National Monetary
Commission, Washington, 1910), pp. 259-273.

67 Advertiser, Nov. 26, 1833. The article continued in part: "We cannot dismiss

CREATING A CITY 175

Though Rochester s aspiration for additional banks was not gratified
for several years, credit stringencies were partly alleviated by the Canal
Board s practice of depositing the tolls in local institutions. Thus the
deposit of $280,955 in the two Rochester banks in 1832 added con
siderably to the funds available for circulation and contributed to bank
profits. 68 Dividends of 10 per cent were normal during these years
despite the uncertainty in many pkces concerning Rochester s future
prospects. 69 Deflation in real estate, or rather in lot speculation, was not
matched in other fields. The loans and discounts of the Bank of Monroe
reached $713,946 in 1832, and when the New York Life Insurance
Company reported its loans in the area to be well above par, the com
pany s president observed that "the advancing improvement of the
country, and its prosperity, must add daily to that security." 70

The healthy character of Rochester s affairs became apparent as the
gloom of the early thirties disappeared. A desire for more accurate in
formation concerning the town s industrial activity caused the Franklin
Institute to appoint a Committee on Manufactures late in i828, 71 and
statistical summaries of at least suggestive value appeared from time to
time. At the close of 1831 the investment in local manufacturing enter
prises was placed at $511,000 and their product for the year at $1,875,-
ooo. 72 Two years later these figures had increased to $609,143 and
$2,105,239 respectively. Postal receipts practically doubled between
1826 and 1834; private dwellings numbered 1,300 at the latter date,
representing a gain in size, stability, and probably in numbers, over
the- 1,4 74 houses and shops of iSay. 73 Those individuals who had put
their funds into productive enterprises, such as Abelard Reynolds with
his Arcade, were now able to raise additional funds from Eastern in-

this subject without expressing our regret at the bad consequences which have
attended the sparing, reluctant manner in which the legislature has hitherto
chartered capital. What has been the effect? The capital of the state has pre
sented a scene of management to procure these charters, & little else concerning
the great interests of the state could obtain consideration. The stock chartered has
been a bone of contention among our citizens whose avarice has been tempted
by high premiums. Charter a sufficient amount to absorb the surplus capital, &
it sinks to par value where it ought to be, & the contention ceases. Legislative busi
ness would move on with its usual purity."

^Assembly Doc. (1833), No. 4, p. 9; (1834), No. 4.

69 Assembly Doc. (1833), No. 89, p. 72.

70 Assembly Doc. (1833), No. 69, passim, No. 209, pp. 18, 19, 28.

71 Advertiser, Nov. 19, 1828; Board of Manufacturers of Rochester, "Secretary s
Account," Jan. 29, 1830, Charles Perkins Papers, MSS, Roch. Pub. Library. Ten
of the twelve members paid $1.66 each to meet the bill for a six-month advertise
ment in the New York Gazette inviting correspondence on the business prospects
of Rochester.

72 Roch. Republican, Dec. 27, 1831; Nov. 6, 1832.

73 Directory (1834), P- 2 - No figure for private dwellings is available for 1827.

176 TEE WATER-POWER CITY

vestors for the purchase of undeveloped lots at depreciated values. 74
Moreover, the appearance of the business quarter improved rapidly as
the old heavy fronts were torn out and "rebuilt in the light and tasteful
manner of the city." 75 Rochester was rapidly assuming the character
of the Flour City.

THE HESITANT ASSUMPTION OF URBAN RESPONSIBILITIES

The second important task of the period was to develop agencies to
cope with the growing civic problems. Though reluctance to assume
urban status was dwindling, economic, political, and religious distrac
tions delayed the acquisition of a city charter until 1834, occasioning
many temporary adjustments of the town s functions. The halting and
uncertain management of its affairs contributed to the confusion of
Rochester s formative years, measurably retarding its growth; never
theless, civic and political independence was achieved by the mid-
thirties.

Agitation for a city charter, first defeated in 1826, revived late in
1828 to continue unabated until finally successful six years later. 76
That it was not a presumptuous desire was evident from a comparison
with other cities, for the Genesee mill town had in 1827 passed the
8000 figure at which Pittsburgh and Cincinnati gained cityhood in
1816 and 1817 respectively, while many others attained that status with
smaller numbers. The New York legislature, however, had but recently
defeated Brooklyn s application, despite its larger size, 77 and there was
little disposition to grant Rochester the favor while its own citizens were
divided on the matter. A public meeting strongly indorsed the applica
tion in 1829, but the protests of the opposition, who not only cherished
the traditions of the New England town, but also feared larger taxes,
caused the legislature to defer action. 78

Meanwhile the trustees, confronted with numerous and insistent
problems, were forced to attack them with the limited powers at hand.
The streets continued to present the most serious difficulties. Sidewalks
were ordered extended from time to time; assessments provided for new
sewers; and the draft of citizens for labor on the streets continued.
Typical specifications called for sewers eighteen inches square with stone

74 Reynolds Papers for 1831 and 1832. It was at this period that Abelard
Reynolds extended his holdings on Corn Hill and other promising sections of
Rochester s outskirts.

75 Advertiser, May n, 1830.

76 "Doings of the Trustees," Dec. 16, 1828; Feb. 28, 1829; Advertiser and
Telegraph, Nov. 19, 1829; Mar. 25, 1830.

77 Ralph F. Weld, Brooklyn Village: 1816-1834 (New York, -1938), pp. 39-53.

78 "Doings of the Trustees," Mar. 3, Nov. 17, Dec. 22, 1829; Assembly Journal
(1832), pp. 331, 337; John F. Sly, Town Government in Massachusetts (Cam
bridge, 1930), pp. 104-124.

IX. i. JONATHAN CHILD

IX. 2. REVEREND JOSEPH PENNEY

IX. 3. EVERARD PECK

IX. 4. HENRY O REILLY

X. i. DR. CHESTER DEWEY X. 2. JUDGE SAMUEL LEE SELDEN

X. 3. LEWIS H. MORGAN

X, 4. FREDERICK DOUGLASS

CREATING A CITY 177

sides and the bottom and top of planks; the depth of course depended
upon the lay of the land, for a slight pitch was necessary to Insure
drainage. 79 Nearly two miles of such sewers and three miles of sidewalks
were constructed by 1834, when a few blocks of macadam paving ap
peared around the central Four Corners. 80

The emergence of an urban center was suggested by several additional
improvements. The first action numbering the houses on the four prin
cipal streets occurred in December, 1829; 81 a renewed drive to compel
lot holders to sweep the streets in front of their properties once each
week started that year; S2 and in November, 1830, the first street lamps
appeared. The bridge lamps of an earlier day had probably vanished,
as seven lamps were now ordered for the various bridges^ together with
eight others to be erected at the two major intersections east and west
of the river. Though the number of these oil lamps doubled a year later,
the appropriation for their maintenance was cut off in the spring of
1833 when a desire for economy gained sway. 83

A problem which required renewed attention was that of increasing
and safeguarding the town s water supply. Scattered public and private
wells comprised the chief source of drinking water, and the trustees were
frequently called upon to install a pump in a newly dug well or to drain
and clean one that had become foul. 84 The opening of four mineral
springs within the limits raised the community s hopes until the water
proved better suited for use in public bath houses than for drinking
purposes; 85 As household needs increased, Elisha Johnson, Rochester s
outstanding engineer, drafted a plan for supplying the community with
fresh water. After some hesitation, application was made to the legis
lature in 1834 for authority to organize a water company. 86 Such power
was indeed granted under the city charter of that year, but meanwhile
renewed petitions for public wells received favor. 87

A more insistant aspect of the problem was the lack of adequate water
resources for the fire fighters. The small reservoirs frequently con
structed at strategic corners consisted of wooden hogsheads buried where
rain water would keep them reasonably filled, or open basins rilled by

79 "Doings of the Trustees," June 14, 1831.

80 Henry O Reilly, Sketches oj Rochester, pp. *379-*s8o.

81 "Doings of the Trustees," Dec. 8, 1829.

^"Doings of the Trustees," May 19, 1829. The original ordinance passed on
Dec. 10, 1828, had of course not been enforced during the winter. Advertiser,
May 17, 1832.

^"Doings of the Trustees," Nov. 16, 1830; Nov. 22, 1831; Apr. 30, 1833.

^"Doings of the Trustees," May 26, June 16, Sept. 15, 29, 1829; Feb. 9, 1830;
Aug. 9, 1 6, 1831.

85 Rock. RepubUcan, Sept. 4, 1832; Enquirer, May 25, 1830.

^"Doings of the Trustees," Jan. 3, 1832; Assembly Journal (1834), P- S3.

87 "Doings of the Trustees," June 4, 1833.

i 7 8 THE WATER-POWER CITY

"aqueducts" of hollow logs leading from a raceway or some other
abundant water supply. 8 Although even such modest reservoirs supplied
a fairly satisfactory makeshift in summertime, they were of little use
during winter months or dry seasons. Only good fortune saved the
town from a serious conflagration in December, 1831, when several
wooden buildings just north of the Mansion House were destroyed. As
the fire companies exhausted the available water supply before the
flames approached the old tavern, only a shift in wind saved that
favorite community center and probably the central part of town
as well* 8

No one denied that the fire hazard was the major community concern.
The bucket brigade was not abandoned until 1829, when the citizens,
relieved of the necessity for keeping fire buckets, assessed themselves to
purchase a new engine in Auburn. Three years later Rochester had its
own manufacturer of fire engines, and by 1834 the town was equipped
with six engines and one ladder company. 90 Lively conflicts frequently
occurred when one company crossed the path of another as they
hauled their engines to the scene of a fire. 91 Their best efforts usually
sufficed only to check the spread of the blaze.

Organized fire prevention started when each ward appointed five
wardens, empowered to inspect all structures and to report faulty flues
or other dangerous conditions. 92 Nevertheless, the seven fires of 1831
were followed by sixteen in 1832.^ Fines against church sextons who
failed to ring their bells on the outbreak of a fire were replaced in 1833
by rewards for those first to sound the alarm. 94 But all agreed that the
fire hazard would never be brought under control until an adequate
supply of water was made available in all parts of town. It was
therefore somewhat of a surprise when the greatest fire of Rochester s
short history broke out on the night of January 25, 1834, directly
over the river. All the wooden buildings that had crept out along
the north side of the bridge went up in flames, with a property loss of
nearly ^loOjOoo, 95

Included in that holocaust was the bridge market which had occupied
much of the trustees time and thought since its erection five years

^"Doings of the Trustees," June 30, 1829, Jan. 10, May 25, June 30, 1830;
Nov. 27, 1832.

^Rack. Republican, Bee. 20, 1831.

90 "Doings of the Trustees," July 7, Aug. n, 1829; OcL 5, 1830; Nov. 29,
1^32; Jan. 19, June 4, 1833; Advertiser, Dec. 20, 1831.

&1 Advertiser, June 6, 1832.

^"Doings of the Trustees," July 12, Dec. 20, 1831.

83 Roch. Republican, Jan. 17, 1832; Advertiser, Jan 7, 1833. The property
destroyed in 1831 was estimated at $43,750 and that of 1832 at only $13,377.
Insurance covered over two-thirds of these losses,

94 "Doings of the Trustees," Dec. 2, 10, 1833.

95 Gem, Feb. i, 1834; "Doings of the Trustees," Jan. 27, 1834.

CREATING A CITY 179

before. The rentals from its numerous stalls had early promised a hand
some return on the investment, spurring the village to buy up the
market stock. When the last installment was paid off in 1830, the town
looked forward to a revenue of approximately 1,000 a year. 96 Petitions
for a second market at the point where Buffalo Street crossed the canal
were denied, though a supplementary market equipped with two large
butcher stalls was provided in Frankfort. 91 With the sale of fresh fish
or meat in other parts of town rigidly prohibited, throngs of eager
customers made the bridge market a community asset. Plans were drawn
for a new market shortly after the fire, but disagreement over its
location postponed construction; in the meantime several of the market
men erected temporary stalls on the old bridge site. 98

The trustees took early action to provide hay scales in front of the
Red Mill where the great loads brought in from surrounding farms
could be weighed and quickly disposed of without obstructing the
streets." Official wood measurers and leather inspectors were appointed
to saf eguard these thriving activities a regulation which was especially
useful in the case of the wood dealers whose daily loads supplied practi
cally all the available fuel. 100

Meanwhile, as the need for economy was balanced against the greater
fire hazards of the winter months, the town watch was reorganized each
November and discontinued in March. A captain of the watch, ap
pointed to assure efficiency, kept his five assistants on duty throughout
the night only on New Year s eve. 101 When the "watch room" in the
Court House was required for other uses in 1833, the watch fees were
advanced from $8 a month to fifty cents a night to enable the men to
find their own beds. 102

The old battle over licensing regulations continued, with those favor
ing prohibitive fees gradually gaining the upper hand. After a public
debate of the issue hi 1829, grocery licenses, which had ranged between
5 and $12 the year before, increased to between $12 and $25. During
the great revival of 1831 the fee again advanced to $30, and to $40 a
year later when it was provided that only applicants of good character
should be given licenses. 103 Despite the anomalous admission that good

96 "Doings of the Trustees," Mar. 30, Apr. 30, 1830.

97 "Doings of the Trustees," Dec. 30, 1828; Feb. 3, Mar. 27, May 26, 1829.
^"Doings of the Trustees," July 7, 1829; Apr. 30, 1830; Jan. 27, Feb. n, Mar.

19, 1834.

""Doings of the Trustees," June 30, July 7, -1829; Mar. i, 1831.

100 Assembly Doc. (1832), No. 23; (1833), No. 91; Rock. Republican, Jan. 31,
1832.

101 "Doings of the Trustees," Nov. 15, 1831; Nov. 27, 1832; Mar. 26, Nov. 19,
Dec. 31, 1833-

102 "Doings of the Trustees," Dec. 2, 1833.

103 "Doings of the Trustees," May 6, 12, 1829^ May 6, 1830, May 5, 7,
May 10, 15, 1832.

z8o THE WATER-POWER CITY

men might engage in the sale of liquor, the reform represented a victory
for the forces of Zion, evident in the smaller number of licensed
dealers. 104 In similar fashion license restrictions decreased the number
of theatrical performances and excluded gambling devices, though the
town remained open to animal shows and like exhibits. 105

The most serious problem that confronted the community was the
cholera epidemic of 1832. Concern began to mount in June when news
arrived that the plague had reached Montreal. The trustees, reluctant
to interfere in ecclesiastical matters, rejected an appeal by local clergy
men for a day of public fasting to ward off divine wrath; 106 instead the
defunct board of health was reorganized and Dr. Colman sent to
Montreal to study the character and treatment of the disease. While
there, he conferred with Canadian physicians and joined a New York
delegation in case observation, but Dr. Colman s report that the con
tagious character of the malady was overemphasized failed to dispel
fears at Rochester. 107 Numerous sanitary precautions were hastily taken
and incoming lake vessels inspected. It was over the canal from the
East, however, that Rochester s first cholera victim arrived early that
July. 108

Soon the ravages of the dread plague spread terror and death through
the community, sorely trying the spirits of the most courageous. Ap
proximately one thousand fled the town, and many who had no place to
go kept within doors, so that normal village functions were neglected.
Some papers suspended publication, while the editor of the Advertiser,
who had bravely carried on, was sorrowfully compelled to bury his
own wife, an early victim of the scourge. 109 Neighboring bath resorts
seized the occasion to advertise the healthful character of their establish
ments. 110 In the general exodus two members of the board of health
tendered their resignations. During the first month following the out
break fifty-seven deaths were ascribed to cholera and by the middle of
July the toll reached eleven in one day. m

Fortunately, several heroic leaders emerged, causing the spirits of

104 Observer? May 29, 1829 ; Ebenezer Griffin, An Address Delivered at Roches
ter before the Monroe County Temperance Society at their Annual Meeting, Jan. 4,
1831 (Rochester, 1831), p. 9, The 99 licenses of 1828 were reduced to 60 in 1830,

105 "Doings of the Trustees," passim.

106 "Doings of the Trustees," June 20, 1832.

107 "Doings of the Trustees," June 25, 26, 1832; Dr. Anson Colman to Dr.
Matthew Brown, Montreal, June 27, 1832, Colman Letters, Univ. Rochester;
Rock. Republican, Aug. 7, 1832.

108 Advertiser, June 19, 21, 26, 1832; Observer, June 20, 1832; Liberal Advo
cate, Jury 14, 1832.

109 jRoc&. Republican, Aug. 7, 1832; Liberal Advocate, July 26, 1832.
110 JRoc&. Republican, Aug. 14, Sept. 4, 1832.

XL1 JR<?cfe. RepubUcan, Aug. 21, 1832; July 12 to Aug. 12 57 deaths; n died on
Aug. 15-

CREATING A CITY 181

the town to rally. Colonel Ashbel W. Riley, appointed to fill a vacancy
on the board, assumed personal responsibility for hunting out new
victims. When efforts to save them failed, the fearless Colonel placed the
dead in coffins and buried the majority himself. Constable Simmons
assumed charge of an improvised hospital in an old cooper shop where
homeless patients were given shelter and the scant treatment available. 13 ^
The Rochester board of health courageously took charge of a boatload
of immigrants which had lost five out of fifty-six passengers before
reaching the village, but when fourteen more died at the hospital, in
dignation was expressed against the health authorities of eastern towns
who had refused to permit the boat to stop within their territories. The
practice of New York and Albany philanthropists who provided im
migrants free but crowded passage on canal boats bound for the West
was roundly condemned as contributing to the spread of the dis
ease. 113

Repeated efforts were made to dispel the fear and consternation which
cast a blight over the community. The pious assumption that only the
dissipated would suffer soon proved false as victims appeared among
the most respectable/ 14 but the attempt to give reassurance by showing
that the deaths of July, 1831, had slightly exceeded those of the
same month in I832, 115 lost its effect when the number of daily fatalities
mounted in August. Small consolation was afforded by reports of the
plague s ravages in other cities, though news that the situation was
improving in Montreal came as a good omen for the early relief of
Rochester. Indeed, after the peak of eleven deaths on August i$th, the
number of new cases gradually declined, and the townsfolk began to
breathe more easily early in September when the last fatality was,
reported. 116 A total of 118 victims and approximately 400 cases had been
recorded in the village, but the board of health took the optimistic view
that only one out of thirty had been attacked while less than a fourth
of these had died, many of them transients, so that the community could
be justly thankful that most of its 12,000 citizens remained in good
health. 117

The town rallied quickly from its affliction, determined to meet future
hazards with greater confidence. When an epidemic of smallpox threat
ened late that year, the board of health took prompt measures to pro
vide free vaccination. 118 And the next spring when a general state of

112 Liberal Advocate, Sept. 22, 1832.
^Rock. Republican, July 31, 1832.

^Rock. Republican, Aug. 21, 1832; WEilliam] Pitkin to Dr. Powell Morgan,
Rochester, Aug. 16, 1832, MS, Collected Letters, R. P. L.
n5 Rock. Republican, Aug. 14, 1832.
116 Rock. Republican, Sept. u, 1832; Gem, Sept. 15, 1832.

117 Rock. Republican, Sept. n, 18, 1832.

118 "Doings of the Trustees," Nov. 27, 1832; Advertiser, Dec. 31, 1832.

182 THE WATER-POWER CITY

good health was reported, the villagers paused to honor those who had
rendered faithful service during the emergency. 11 *

While the trustees generally found themselves overburdened, several
important functions were beyond their control. The division of re
sponsibility with the county in respect to poor relief and the construc
tion or repair of bridges proved a source of inefficiency and delay. 120
More serious was the lack of effective control over the district schools.
Rochester likewise felt the need for improved local courts M1 and for a
new jail, but these were the province of the county. Indeed, the village
was still but a minor portion not as yet even an autonomous sub
division of the county which numbered 49,862 inhabitants in 1830,
only a fifth of them in Rochester.

The growing complexity of the county s affairs appeared in the size
of its expenditures as well as in their character. Special assessments for
roads and bridges were debated at practically every meeting of the
supervisors. The county taxes, which amounted to $17,490 for con
tingent expenses in 1829, advanced to $21,500 by 1833, without in
cluding numerous special assessments and other items, but the county s
real property valuation rose even more rapidly, exceeding $8,000,000

by 1835.^

Problems of poor relief were aggravated by the combined effects of
the recession, the ravages of cholera, and the increasing number of
destitute immigrants. As the supervisors refused to abolish the vague
distinction between town and county poor, duplication of effort re
sulted. Thus 390 persons received county relief within Gates and
Brighton townships during the fiscal year 1832-1833 when 462 were
assisted directly by these townships, while 168 from the same area were
sheltered for a time in the county 4 poorhouse erected at Brighton in
1826. The great majority of "cases" were attributed to intemperance,
and approximately one third were of foreign birth. Admission to the
poorhouse required a health certificate, and for this and other reasons
Monroe County had the lowest per capita poorhouse admissions in the
state. 123 Approximately a tenth were children, some of them cholera
orphans, others abandoned by parents migrating westward. An apparent
lack of enterprise among the immigrants, many of whom had been

119 Gem, May 4, 1833.

120 "Doings of the Trustees," Jan. 15, 1833.

m Assembly Journal (1831), pp. 175, *37; (1832), pp. 251, 356; (1833), pp.
150, 172, 972^973-

^Proceedings of Board of Supervisors (1821-1849), pp. 76, no, 115, 142;
Rock. Republican, Oct. 20, 1829.

123 Samuel CMpman, Report of an Examination of the Poor Houses, Jails, etc.
in the State of New York (Albany, 1834), pp. 36-38; Inquirer, July 31, 1832;
Assembly Doc., (1831), No. 66E.

CREATING A CITY 183

parish poor in their home countries across the Atlantic, prompted the
adoption of a labor stint on the 47-acre poor farm. Whether or not
inmates were thus spurred to seek employment, the farm produce helped
to keep the weekly per capita budget down to 59 cents. 124

Possibly the most urgent problem before the supervisors was the
construction of a new jail. Though permission to raise $5,000 for that
purpose had been secured from the legislature in 1828, the county
treasurer died insolvent shortly after the funds were collected, and his
bondsmen escaped payment. A grand jury which examined the old jail
again in 1830 condemned the arrangement that crowded debtors, de
tention cases, and felons together around one narrow and poorly heated
corridor. 125 When authority to raise another $5,000 was granted, a site
was chosen on the southern tip of the island formed by the river and the
Rochester and Montgomery race. A stone wall, constructed by the con
victs along the southern edge of the island, afforded protection from
floods, considerably benefitting the town as well, but the funds proving
insufficient, a second assessment was required to finish the $12,000 jail
in I833. 126 Built on the cell-block pattern of Auburn prison, the new
jail, a model in its day, attracted favorable comment from numerous
visitors. Its facilities were soon to be overtaxed, however, and even be
fore the building was finished the inmates, numbering 279 in 1832-1833,
began to arrive/ 27

The civic function which most urgently called for responsible village
supervision was that performed by the scattered district schools. County
inspectors with scant authority bad been appointed, but the school dis
tricts within the village limits were seriously baffled by the situation,
for the problems in Rochester differed from those of the outlying town
ships. Though Gates and Brighton together numbered 4085 children
between 5 and 16 years of age in 1834, only 2490 of them attended
public school during the year. Elsewhere in the county the attendance
exceeded the number of children, a statistical result made possible by
the enrollment of transients, many of whom were not present when the
school census was taken. The still greater number of transients in
Rochester s shifting population must have made the failure of the town
schools even more serious than the figures revealed. 128 Only a central
school authority could hope to cope with the problem, and that waited
upon the grant of a city charter.

Though the situation was alleviated by numerous private schools,

124 Assembly Doc. (1831), No. 66E; (1833), No. 38; Advertiser, Oct. 12, 1832;
Inquirer, Oct. 22, 1833; Assembly Doc. (1834), No. 73> P- 23.

i* 5 Craftsman, Jan. $, 1830; Assembly Doc. (1831), No. 18.

^Assembly Doc. (1832), No. 13.

127 Chipman, p. 37.

128 "Annual Report of the Commissioners of Common Schools," Assembly Doc.
(1834), No. 9A.

184 THE WATER-POWER CITY

the absence of regulation and the fleeting character of these ventures
decreased their usefulness. The Female Charitable Society s school was
more stable ? and two additional charity schools under church auspices
supplemented the work of the Sabbath schools, yet many children es
caped formal instruction. 129 In order to make up for inadequate school
ing among the older boys, an Institute for Practical Education was
established where poor lads could earn their support in the intervals
between classes. 130 The Rochester Institute, in line with a reform popular
at the time, functioned for nearly two years with success until a sudden
drop in the price of the barrels, which the boys turned out in the ad
joining cooperage, deprived the school of its major income, bringing
the experiment to an untimely end. 131

The most forthright attempt to provide a school adapted to the needs
of the growing town was made by the trustees of Brighton Districts 4
and 14 under the special charter granted by the legislature to the
Rochester High School in 1827. Unfortunately the construction cost ex
ceeded the fund available by $3000, and as popular opposition fore
stalled an additional tax, the trustees, after three fairly successful years,
determined to lease the building. 132 When the Reverend Gilbert Morgan
reopened the school as the Rochester Seminary in 1832, a staff of nine
teachers attracted over 300 scholars and provided Rochester with one
of the best schools in western New York. Most of its 350 students in
1833 were enrolled free of charge from the two Brighton districts in
lieu of rent, but 106 were graded in the higher branches or special
classes where they paid fees totalling $1681 for the year. Though the
Regents contributed $318.46, the largest grant made to any academy in
the state, the combined funds failed to cover the salary budget. Difficult
times lay ahead. 133

*

While demands for a city charter came from many sources, numerous
political complications delayed action. As the center of Antimasonry,

^Observer, Jan. 9, 1830; Blake McKelvey, "On the Educational Frontier,"
R. H. S., Pub., XVI, 30-34.

130 Assembly Journal (1832), pp. 68, 279, 532; Assembly Doc. (1832), No. 2,
13. See also Gilbert H. Barnes and D. L. Dumond, eds., Letters of Theodore
Dwight Weld, Angelina Grimke Weld, and Sarah Grimke (New York, 1934), pp.
i7n, sin, 56-57, 70.

*** Rock. Republican, July 26, Sept. 6, 1831; Advertiser, Nov. 17, 18, 1831;
Inquirer, Apr. 3, May 8, 1832.

^Advertiser and Telegraph, Feb. 2, 4, 1830; Assembly Journal (1831), pp. 47,
100, 252; Advertiser, May 3, Sept 4, 1832.

133 "Annual Report of the Regents," Senate Doc. (1833), No. 70; Catalogue of
the Officers and Students of the Rochester Seminary (Rochester, 1833) ; W. J.
Gifford, History of the Development of the N. 7. State High School System, Aim.
Report of N. Y. Education Dept. for 1919 (Albany, 1922), pp. 101-103; Mary
B. A. King, Looking Backward (New York, 1870), pp. 127-128.

CREATING A CITY 185

Rochester enjoyed no special favors from the Regency-controlled
legislature, and although that body stood ready in 1832 to grant a city
charter similar to those of Buffalo and Utica, it would not agree with
Rochester s carefully laid plans to safeguard local autonomy. Hence
the charter was postponed another two years.

The political balance in Rochester remained so close in the early
thirties that every measure was carefully examined for partisan implica
tions. John C. Spencer, a brilliant Canandaigua attorney, was invited
to draft a charter for Rochester in the hope that an outsider with
moderate National Republican leanings would be unaffected by local
rivalries. But soon after the charter was submitted early in 1832
complications began to appear. As Spencer had by this time joined
the Antimasonic party, Ms draft was suspect as far as the two Jack-
sonian trustees were concerned. One veteran trustee primarily in
terested in an adequate charter. Dr. Matthew Brown, Antimason though
he was, sought to incorporate necessary Democratic amendments in
order to speed the charter s adoption. The same sentiment, evident at
a public meeting, finally sent the slightly modified Spencer draft to
Albany, accompanied, however, with petitions both supporting and

* "fli.

opposing its passage.

Political considerations found renewed expression in the legislative
debate. Though the general practice of the day called for a recorder
appointed by the governor and justices chosen by the aldermen, the
proposed charter provided for the local election of all officers. As the
recorder normally sat with the aldermen, the Regency jealously guarded
its indirect vote in the Rochester council by reinserting the customary
provision. The Antimasonic minority, unable to block this revision, did
force a compromise which sheared the recorder of influence in the
council. Many opposed the charter because of the increased taxing au
thority conferred on the council, and accordingly the original draft,
fixing $8000 as the maximum annual tax, was revised, reducing the
general maximum to $5000, with additions for specified purposes.
Buffalo and Utica, each with smaller populations, permitted the $8000
maximum, but Rochester felt relieved to hear of its charter restraints.
Although these modifications were accepted by the opposing factions, a
deadlock occurred over the selection of local justices, defeating the
charter at the last moment. 135

Rochester was not prepared for this blow. Arrangements for local

134 "Doings of the Trustees," Jan. 17, 31, Feb. 7, 14, 15, 21, 1832; Advertiser,
Feb. 3, Mar. 16, 1832; "John C. Spencer," Dictionary of American Biography,
XVII, 449-450-

135 Assembly Journal (1832), pp. 331, 337, 414, 724, 829; Senate Journal (1832),
PP. 33i, 354, 362, 373, 396; Rock. Republican, Apr. 10, -1832; Advertiser, Apr. 26,
27, 30, 1832.

i86 THE WATER-POWER CITY

elections had already been made by the trustees, a map of the expected
city tract was completed, and the county assessors were calculating town
schedules which exempted Rochester property from Brighton and
Gates. 136 Since Buffalo had gained a charter without difficulty, the
locally dominant Antimasons were held responsible for obstructing
Rochester s aspirations. The reaction did not counterbalance other in
fluences that November, but the next May and again in November the
Antimasons lost all contests in Rochester/ 37 Despite renewed applica
tion for a slightly modified charter, disagreement over the selection of
justices again blocked passage. 138 This time the Antimasons sought to
make political capital out of the Regency s refusal to allow the "filthy
mechanics" of Rochester to elect their justices; 139 many citizens, how
ever, impatient for the greater services of a city government, suspected
the obstructionists of being chiefly concerned to protect their properties
from the burden of city taxes.

As the demand for a charter could no longer be denied, a sufficient
number of votes was secured in April, 1834, to pass the bill almost as
originally submitted two years before. Not only were the justices to be
appointed, but the recorder had his customary powers, and an $8000
tax limit was reinserted. 140 Under the new definition of Rochester s limits
4,819 acres were included within the bounds, practically four times the
former village area. 141 Though few citizens were added by this annexa
tion, since undeveloped subdivisions comprised the outlying portions
of the city tract, the population had now reached i2,252. 142

The organization of the first city government {Drought the local
political struggle to a head. With popular interest in the Morgan con
troversy flagging, the Antimasons sought a new grievance, as their fight
over the charter illustrated. Elsewhere in the state close ties were de
veloping between this faction and the National Republicans or Clay
supporters, while in Rochester they were drawn together by the
temperance issue as well as by a common desire to see the new taxing
power placed in moderate hands. An anti- Jackson or Whig ticket was
accordingly named to oppose the "Mortgage Party [who] are pre
paring for a desperate conflict." "Whiskey," one editor declared, runs

138 "Doings of the Trustees," Apr. 26, 1832, Oct. 29, 1833 J Proceedings of the
Board of Supervisors (1821-1849), pp. 91, 99.

"^Advertiser, Nov. 23, 1832; May 7, 1833; Inquirer, Nov. 12, 1833.
188 "Doings of the Trustees," Jan. 9, Feb. 22, 1833; Senate Journal (1833),
pp. 91, 118, 175, 180, 193, 198, 265, 308, 326.

139 Democrat, Mar. 27, 1834.

140 Assembly Journal (1834), PP- 4*j 77) *66, 816; Senate Journal (1834), pp.
241-242, 321.

141 Advertiser, Dec. 28, 1830,* Rock. Republican, Nov. 6, 1832; W. Earl Weller,
"The Expanding Boundaries of Rochester," R. H. S., Pub., XIV, 175-178.

142 Directory (1834) , p. 5. See the Elisha Johnson map included in the directory.

CREATING A CITY 187

like water in Dublin [lie Irish quarter]. We intend to be ready for
them," 14 *

The WMgs proved successful electing a full skte of aldermen^ who
proceeded to name Jonathan Child, son-in-law of Colonel Rochester,
first mayor. At a celebration held on Brown s Island overlooking the
falls/ 44 the "Lord Mayor" and old Judge Strong, their bitter differences
of the previous decade forgotten, delivered speeches, and many cold
hams were consumed, together with much hot coffee, as one opposition
paper scornfully noted. The new aldermen should recollect,, remarked
the Liberal Advocate, "that times have changed; and that [the] somber
cloud that overshadowed this region during the visitations of Finney
and Burchard is nearly dissipated." But the same editor was soon
forced to report that "the work of regeneration has commenced a war
of extermination against Barber poles and tavern signs" 145

RELIGIOUS REVIVALS ANB REPERCUSSIONS

The city of 1834 with its newly acquired charter, its 1300 houses
scattered out over a wide area, its mill wheels rambling again with
renewed optimism, reflected still another influence the stirring re
ligious revivals of the early thirties. It was not without point that a
Scottish visitor 146 of 1831 described Rochester as the "perfect example
of progress from stumps to steeples," for that was the era s outstanding
cycle of achievement. Fourteen steeples called attention to some ele
gant structures by 1834, but it was the new dynamic spirit rather than
the growth of institutional equipment that characterized and animated
the community during the early thirties.

Rochester s position as the outstanding community of the Northwest
during the kte twenties attracted several worthy clerics. Joseph Penney
was respected for his learning; Henry J. Whitehouse at St. Luke s was
loved for his modest piety, while the impassioned sermons of Joel
Parker were making Third Presbyterian the focal center of stirring
events. Oliver C. Comstock, a former congressman, provided the Baptist
Church and the Sunday School Union with able leadership, while Glezen
Fillmore, brother of the only Antimason to reach the White House,
was building up the Methodist congregation to fill the largest church in
town. 147 Yet it was from the fervid response of lay members that the
revival movement developed, and no doubt the gloomy aftermath of

143 > emocra ,t f Apr. 29, 1834.

i** Democrat, June 10, 14, 1834.

145 Uberal Advocate, June 14, 21, 1834.

146 Adam Ferguson, Tour of Canada and . . . the United States, p. 173.

147 "Joel Parker," Dictionary of American Biography, XTV, 231; "Henry J.
Whitehouse," National Cyclopedia of American Biography , XI, 33; "Oliver Com
stock," Biographical Dictionary of the American Congress (Washington, 1928),
p. 837.

i88 THE WATER-POWER CITY

Rochester s boom greatly contributed to the emotional outburst. For a
time the movement seemed to be an advanced phase of the politico-
journalistic furor of 1828 and 1829, but its energies, turning toward
ideological rather than partisan reforms, produced more far-reaching
social than political effects.

Curiously enough, it was the foolhardy leap of Sam Patch which
touched off the emotional powder keg in Rochester. News of the spread
of revivals in the East and of a "refreshing shower 7 at Lima up the
valley had brought joy to local zealots and, together with the powerful
preaching of Joel Parker, had stirred enthusiasm for Bible distribution,
temperance, and Sabbath reform. Annual "concerts of prayer" were
held in the Court House Square, 148 yet mirthful activities retained their
hold in Rochester until the Sunday following Patch s fatal leap, when
Elder Josiah Bissell admonished the members of the Third Presbyterian
Sunday School for taking part in the tragedy. An awful feeling de
scended upon his hearers as he warned that all who by their attendance
had encouraged the jumper would be held accountable at the Last
Judgment. 149 With the misfortunes besetting the Masonic brethren for
their thoughtless participation in secret and evil associations fresh in
mind, dire punishments were to be expected for this new offense. It did
not require an active imagination to connect the unaccountable languor
in Rochester s economic affairs with divine displeasure.

Fired with almost fanatical convictions, Elder Bissell emerged as the
dominant personality in the community. Not only was he a patron of
the Observer, that unrivalled mouthpiece of local religious zealots, but
he was one of the moving spirits in the Antimasonic agitation, as well
as the founder and chief backer of the six-day stage company and the
six-day packet line. The chief pillar in the Third Presbyterian Church
and the most active member of local Bible and tract societies, BisselPs
influence proved far-reaching. 150 Early and large investments in east-
side property had brought rich returns, but he overextended his re
sources in the "Pioneer" stage and packet ventures. 151 With the slump
in real estate values at Rochester, Bissell faced a critical financial
prospect. Yet obstacles in one field only prompted him to plunge more
boldly in new directions. When his six-day stage failed to secure the
mail contract, a widespread campaign was organized to induce Congress
to stop the mails on the Sabbath. 152 And when that measure was de
feated, conferences were held with church leaders in New York and

148 Observer^ Mar. 3, 1827.

149 King, Looking Backward, pp. 117-118; Joseph Penney, House of Mirth.

150 "The Bissells, Father and Son," R. H. S. } Pub., VI, 333-335; Monroe County
Bible Society Record Book, MS, Roch. Hist. Soc.

151 Observer, Feb. 22, Aug. 22, 1828; Craftsman, Apr, 21, 1829.

^Gem, Dec. 12, 1829; Observer, Nov. 26, Dec. 12, 1828; Jan. 15, 1830; Crafts
man, Mar. 23, 1830.

CREATING A CITY 189

Philadelphia at which plans for a national Christian Party were dis
cussed, attracting the interest of certain Antimasons who already felt
the need for a more popular national issue. 153

Yet BisselFs personality was too volatile to provide the community
with stable leadership. Moreover, he made enemies too readily. 154 Not
only the unregenerate tavern folk and worldly-wise readers of the
Craftsman, but respectable church people were frequently antagonized
by his outspoken condemnation of all who patronized the seven-day
stage even on weekdays. Pioneerism the policy of dealing only with
strictly Christian enterprises could be carried too far, as those who
organized an anti-Pioneer ball at a nearby Chili tavern apparently felt. 155
When the Reverend William James of the Second Presbyterian Church
ventured to ride on the regular stage instead of the Pioneer Line, thus
incurring BisselFs disfavor, a controversy full of portent for Rochester
developed. Disturbing the relations between James and his parishioners,
Bissell advised the pastor, formerly his close friend, that his flock de
sired a change. 156 But Joseph Penney of First Church rose before the
Presbytery to protest against such intermeddling. He would not, he
declared, sit by silently and watch William James, who "does not draw
well in BisselPs harness," be replaced by the Reverend Asa Mahan from
Pittsford, for that would give the zealous Elder "an obedient team
Mahan and Parker." 157 Such autocratic control must be avoided, Penney
declared, adding,

I regard [Elder Bissell] as an active man, prosecuting everytMng lie com
mences with untiring zeal and energy. But there is no distinction with Mm in
Ms beneficial or injurious purposes, all are the same if he has enlisted in
them; they are pursued with the same spirit, right or wrong. ... I do not
impute his measures to wicked motives; but to a willful course, deprecated
by many, lamented by all, and perverting the influence of the church. 158

So acrimonious did this controversy become that the pastors involved
soon sought other charges. James was the first to leave, followed shortly
by Parker who removed to New York where he became a central figure
in Finney s Free Church movement. 159 Joseph Penney enjoyed a visit to
his old home in Northern Ireland. William Wisner was brought from
Ithaca to take the Second Church, and Charles G. Finney was per-

^Craftsman, Mar. 3, 10, 1829; J. G. Bennett, "Diary," Folio 19.

154 Observer, Mar. 12, 20, 1829.

155 Observer, Jan. i$, 1830.

156 Ferdinand Ward to Henrietta Ward, 1830, Clarke Letters, in possession of
Mrs. Buell Mills, Rochester, N. Y.

187 Marian was later first president of Oberlin College. "Asa Mahan," Dictionary
of American Biography, XII, 208-209.
158 Craftsman, Mar. 9, 1830.
139 Observer, June 18, 1830; Gilbert H. Barnes, Antislavery Impulse, pp. 3-16,

2122.

igo THE WATER-POWER CITY

stiaded to come from New York to fill the Third Church and try to
revive harmony within the Presbyterian fold at Rochester. 160

Fiimey s reputation was already well established. His remarkable
successes in central New York five years before had been repeated at
Philadelphia and Boston and finally in New York itself. To his earlier
a new measures/ 7 such as the "anxious seat" and the "Holy Band," had
been added a vision of "disinterested benevolence" and practical Christi
anity which was finding abundant expression in the social causes backed
so generously by the rich Tappan brothers in New York. 161 Rochester
likewise had its patron of moral reforms in Elder Bissell, sometimes
compared with Arthur Tappan/ 62 and it was at BisselPs home that
Finney was entertained.

Tall and grave in appearance, with a dynamic spirit and logical
argument, Finney soon commanded the respect of sober church folk
in Rochester. Laymen were pleased by his simple solution of the old
doctrinal debate over the relative merits of faith and works. "Genuine
faith/ he declared, "always results in good works and is itself a good
work." 163 Four short weeks after Ms arrival, the Observer rejoiced that
"Christians of different denominations are seen mingling together on
the Sabbath and bowing at the same altar in the weekly prayer meet
ings." 164 Indeed, the work of regeneration was "refreshing" the entire
community as Finney, preaching three sermons each Sabbath and con
ducting four or more services during the week, visited the different
Presbyterian churches in turn and sometimes the Baptist and Methodist
chapels as well. The JBoly Band of his assistants enlisted the coopera
tion of pastors from neighboring villages, while the fiery young zealot,
Theodore Weld, came on from the East to lend aid. 165

Positive results soon began to appear. Finney s unclerical garb and
lawyer-like arguments disarmed many determined skeptics, while stu
dents at the High School became distracted by an irresistible concern

. Republican, July 26, 1831; Josiah Bissell to Rev. C. G. Finney,
Rochester, Sept. 15, 1829, photostat in BIssel autograph folder, R. P. L. For the
Reverends Parker, Wisner, and Mahan, see Letters of T. D. Weld, pp. son, 6gn, 7gn.

161 Barnes, Antislavery Impulse, pp. 1-28. Perhaps unwittingly Finney was
carrying forward the line of reasoning advanced by Jonathan Edwards several
decades before when he sought to harmonize Calvinist doctrine with the new
evangelistic trends of the Great Awakening of his day; see Ola E. Winslow,
Jonathan Edwards (New York, 1940), pp. 292-312, espec 308-309.

162 Bennett, "Diary," Folio 19.

163 Charles G. Finney, Lectures on Revivals of Religion (6th ed., New York,
zS&S)* PP. 7-15- Although this and later quotations are from a series delivered in
New York a few years later, Finney s doctrines were already clearly elaborated
before his first arrival in Rochester. See the brief report of his Rochester sermon
on "Faith and Works" in Observer, Nov. 12, 1830.

^^ Observer, Oct. 15, 1830.

165 Observer, Oct. 22, 29, 1830; Jan. 7, 1831; Gem, Apr. 16, 1831.

CREATING A CITY 191

for their souls. So great was the assemblage on one occasion at First
Church that the weight of the balconies spread the walls, releasing one
of the rafters and causing a stampede for the doors. 166 The work con
tinued without interruption, however, until some four hundred new
families were drawn into the fold. 167 The converts included several
destined to play vital roles in the town s history: Samuel D. Porter, a
young man who emerged as a leading reformer during the forties, Alvah
Strong, who soon became a chief pillar of the Baptist Church, and later
of the University as well, and young Henry B. Stanton, destined to
marry Elizabeth Cady and himself play a prominent role in the years
ahead. 168

-

A major result of Finney s preaching was the fresh stimulus imparted
to numerous humanitarian activities. His equalitarian faith that all
men can be saved not only gave reassurance to many individuals pre
viously baffled by Calvinist determinism, but also gratified the psycho
logical needs of others suffering from the hardships of Rochester s first
recession. Preoccupation with worldly affairs was branded, together with
other forms of selfishness, as a major sin. But Finney, never content
with the passive repentance of sinners, regarded conversion as merely
the beginning of a Christian life. Charity, temperance, tolerance, and
humility were held up as the true evidences and proper works for
Christian men. Though his arguments presented little that was new
or especially profound, backed by Ms evangelistic fervor, they released
and coordinated the moral energies of a community already throbbing
with optimistic individualism. 169

The temperance movement had previously gained considerable head
way. With at least four local temperance societies organized in the late
twenties, crowds attended the annual meetings of the Monroe County
Temperance Society at the Court House. 170 Early in 1830 it was an
nounced that ten professed Christians of Rochester, though "busily

166 Advertiser, Oct. 9, Dec. 24, 1830; H. Pomeroy Brewster, "The Magic of a
Voice," R. H. S. r Pub., IV, 280-282 ; King, Looking Backward, pp. 119-127.

^Observer, May 31, 1831; "Bradford King Diary," Oct-Dec., 1830, MS,
University of Rochester. See Robert S. Fletcher, A History of OberUn College
(Oberlin, 1943), pp. 17-24, for a fuH account of this revival.

168 Rev. Augustus H. Strong, "Historical Sketch," Centennial Celebration:
First Baptist Church (Rochester, 1918), pp. 12-13; "H. B. Stanton s Recollec
tions," Samson Scrapbook (Studies in Local History), pp. 27-28, Roch. Hist.
Soc.; Letters of T. D. Weld, pp. Sin, 69-71-

169 C. G. Finney, Lectures to Professing Christians (New York, 1837), pp.
410-425; Barnes, Antislavery Impulse, p. n; Ralph H. Gabriel, The Course of
American Democratic Thought (New York, 1940), pp. 32-38; Carl R. Fish,
The Rise of the Common Man (New York, 1927), pp. 1-12; Merle Curti,
The Growth of American Thought (New York, 1943), pp. 310-313.

170 Observer, Sept. 25, 1829; Jan. 8, 1830,

192 THE WATER-POWER CITY

engaged in worldly affairs, were ready to talk in favor of every good
object , particularly temperance." m Colonel Riley, Jonathan Child,
Levi Ward, and E. F. Marshall, the Hicksite Quaker, took a prominent
part in the agitation, supported most zealously by Samuel Chipman,
editor of the Observer, and spokesman for Josiah Bissell. 172 When a
meeting in February discussed the dire plight of the unemployed poor,
the Observer, regretting that "the principal cause . . . intemperance"
had not even been mentioned, admitted that "the poor are no less
deserving our attention and assistance because they are reduced to
wretchedness and want by legalized Drunkard Manufactories. " 173

One local zealot, rejoicing that "the value of tavern stands in
Rochester and its neighborhood has declined during the last three years
due to temperance societies," added, "Indeed, it has become so
unfashionable to drink that people are ashamed to be seen calling for
liquor at the bars of our public houses. Four years ago the situation
was the reverse!" 174 After the earnest appeals of Finney and Weld it
was reported that, while twenty of Rochester s confirmed drunkards had
met death during the year as a result of the vice, twenty-one others
had signed the pledge. 175 When numerous liquor dealers sold out or
dumped their stock, half the groceries on the east side joined the
temperance band. 176 A full-time agent was appointed to distribute
temperance tracts, while Everard Peck issued the first Temperance
Almanack in the country in 183 1. 177 Yet the extreme position of total
abstinence advocates aroused sufficient resistance to defeat a first at
tempt to prohibit all licenses. 17 * The issue reappeared suddenly in
September, 1833, when a local constable was killed by an angry
drunkard. 179 For a time new licenses were refused and the issue over
shadowed all others in the first city election. Meanwhile, the Monroe
County Temperance Society s affiliated organizations within the county
had grown to twenty, totalling over 3000 members. 180

Several other reform movements appeared in Rochester during these
years. The Observer sponsored an Anti-Tobacco Society, apparently
with little success, in 1829; 181 an anti-war lecture was delivered by a
representative of the Massachusetts Peace Society, 182 while antislavery

171 Observer, Feb. 26, Mar. 5, 1830.

172 Craftsman, Sept. 29, 1830.
J 7 * Observer, Feb. 19, 1830.

174 Griffin, Address Delivered at Rochester, p. 9.

175 Observer, Jan. 7, 1831.

176 Observer, May 21, 1830.

177 Observer, Oct. 15, 1830; Temperance Almanack for 1831, 1832, 1833, 1834.
Printed by E. Peck, Rochester.

178 Liberal Advocate, Apr. 21, May 19, 1832. 181 Observer, Oct. 23, 1829.
Inqwrer f Sept. 17, -1833. ^Inquirer, Aug. 6, 1833.
180 Enquirer, June 14, 1831.

CREATING A CITY 193

agitation began to receive local attention in 1833.^ Likewise from the
East came a new concern for depraved females, stimulating the organiza
tion of a Moral Reform Society, and prompting the Reverend William
Wisner to denounce the double standard. 184 A controversy destined to
stir the community in later years first appeared when several women
ventured to speak out in weekly testimonial meetings ? rousing the
criticism of conservative elders. 185 Yet a choice "Circle" of zealous men
and women, meeting frequently at sunrise prayer services, nurtured a
strong spirit of perfectionism and a desire for "deeper works of grace." 186
A Boatmen s Mutual Relief Society, organized by canallers seeking to
better their lot, 187 received less attention than the Boatmen s Friend
Society, an organization sponsored by those who wished to improve the
morals of the "canaille." Inspired by the example of the Seamen s Friend
Society in the East, a Bethel chapel was proposed, only to be deferred
by the combined opposition of boatmen and forwarders. 188

Renewed zeal activated the Sabbath schools and missionary societies.
The seventh annual convention of the Monroe County Sunday School
Union crowded the Court House with delegates from in schools, 28 of
them reporting classes throughout the year. Over 1,000 teachers gave
instruction to more than 15,000 children and to some 5,000 students
above 16 years of age. The 20 schools in Rochester numbered 400
teachers, 2,000 students, and an estimated 5,000 children. 1 * 9 The work
of the missionary societies appeared in the mounting sums raised for
that purpose. Elder Bissell, the most active local agent of the American
Board of Foreign Missions, reported the receipts for six months in 1829
as $325.57, while a similar period in 1831 brought in $574.6o. 190 Local
interest in the cause was stimulated from time to time by the letters of
Delia Stone, daughter of Isaac W. Stone, who had left for the Sandwich
Islands in 1827, two years before a Rochester publisher brought out the
first translation of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and John in the
Hawaiian language. Home missions likewise attracted support as funds
were raised to send pastors among the Indians and into the new settle
ments of the West 191

183 Advertiser, Nov. 16, 29, Dec. 21, 1833; The Rights of Man, Apr. 26, 1834.

184 Observer, Nov. 9, 1833 ; Rev. William Wisner, The Importance of Keeping
the Heart (Rochester, 1834).

185 Observer, Jan. 20, 183-1.

186 Elisabeth Selden Spencer Eaton to Lieutenant Amos Eaton, Rochester,
Apr. ii, 16, 20, 23, 1833; Feb. 22, 1834; Elisabeth Selden Spencer Eaton Letters,
courtesy of Mrs. Elizabeth Selden Rogers, New York City.

187 Observer, Dec. 29, 1830; Jan. i, Apr. 7, 1831; Liberal Advocate, Apr. 21, 1832.

188 Observer, Aug. 6, 1830; Liberal Advocate, May 19, T832.

189 Seventh Report of the Monroe Sunday School Union (Rochester, 1831).

190 Observer, Sept. 11, 1829, July 14, 1831.

191 Observer, Oct. 13, 1829; Apr. 2, 1830; Edward R. Foreman, "Hawaiian Bible
Printed in Rochester/ R. H. S., Pub., XIV, 316-31:8.

i 9 4 THE WATER-POWER CITY

A renewed attempt developed in the early thirties to provide Rochester
with a suitable institute for the edification of adults. Though the
Franklin Institute of the mid-twenties, split asunder by the Antimasonic
controversy, struggled along in a moribund fashion until i833, 192 most
of its leaders withdrew in June, 1829, to found the Rochester Athenaeum.
When the aged Colonel Rochester became the Athenaeum s first presi
dent, a hall on the second floor of the Arcade was made available by
Abelard Reynolds. 193 A favorable charter, secured from the legislature,
permitted the collection of funds for a library through annual five
dollar fees. The dues unfortunately restricted the membership, which
numbered only 130 in 1834, but a library of some 400 volumes, a news
paper exchange that secured the current issues of most Eastern papers, 19 *
and frequent meetings afforded some opportunity for the intellectual
development of favored townsmen. An affiliated organization, known
as the Young Men s Society, was formed in 1833 and welcomed to the
rooms of the Athenaeum. Dr. Levi Ward, the town s leading patron of
educational projects, became president of the Athenaeum sometime after
Col. Rochester s death, and several of the latter s 84 books were pre
sented to that institution. The inventory of Elder BisselFs estate re
ported 128 volumes plus 29 school books. Judging from the titles ad
vertised by the two local bookstores and Moore s circulating library, not
to mention the output of the local press, interested townsmen did not
lack reading material. 196

To each of these activities the Finney revival brought increased
popular support. The twin virtues, charity and temperance, prospered,
but their less favored sister, tolerance, developed a distorted character.
Yet Josiah Pierson was moved to rejoice over the signs of the millennium
evident in the new cordiality between several of the Protestant churches:

The minor points, on which the Christian world

Were set at variance, much, in former days,

Had all grown obsolete. No Methodist,

Nor Presbyterian, now, nor Churchman, high

Or low, nor Covenanter Baptist none

Qaim d preference for his creed. The antique phrase,

"Denomination" long had been expung d,

And "friends," and "enemies" describ d the whole

Of the great family of man. 196

192 Advertiser, Nov. 29, 1833.

103 Craftsman, June 23, 30, 1829.

194 Advertiser, Jan. 16, 1832.

1&5 BIake McKelvey, "Early Library Developments," R. H. S., Pub., XVI, 29-31.
I am indebted to Mrs. Alice T. Sutton for checking the inventories of numerous
early Rochesterians in the Surrogate s Court.

196 Rev. Josiah Pierson, Millennium 3 A Poem in Five Books (Rochester, 1831),
p. 67.

CREATING A CITY 195

The battle line between truth and error was being reformed to take
advantage of America s cultural contours. Thus the Observer, having
exhausted the possibilities of the old disputes between faith and works
and over the merits of revivals, decided in the summer of 1830 to seek
new issues on which the principal Protestant churches could unite. 197
Controversies of the sort were at hand, for the Universalist and Uni
tarian heresies had now reached Rochester. Despite frequent attacks on
their doctrines, these small dissident groups leased the Court House for
services on the Sabbath until the Antimasons, capturing control of the
board of supervisors, terminated the arrangement, 198 Possibly the large
contribution of Connecticut and western Massachusetts to the city s
population the fact that seven of the thirteen college graduates living
in Rochester in 1830 were Yale men while none hailed from Harvard
may have accounted in part for the unpopularity of the Unitarians,
though the chief attack came from those who felt little more sympathy
for the scientific stirrings at Yale. After struggling along for a time,
the Unitarian society shortly dropped from view. 199

The Observers ire was most frequently roused by the thriving con
gregation at St. Patrick s. A lengthy article on "Popery," signed "Re-
publicus," stimulated an indignant reply from the Reverend Michael
McNamara, printed in the Advertiser, asking the identity of "Re-
publicus" so that the issue could be discussed frankly in the open. The
Observer reprinted the reply together with a second article by "Re-
publicus," and a regular column of "Posers for Papists" ran for several
months; but Father McNamara did not deign to take further public
notice of his anonymous adversary. 200 The growth of the Catholic society
continued unabated, supported as it was by the increasing number of
Irish and German townsfolk. A stone church in the Gothic style soon
replaced the earlier modest chapel. 201 The cooperation of the resident
priest was welcomed from time to time in the temperance societies,
while in 1832, when cholera threatened the town, the Reverend J. F.
McGerry, successor to Father McNamara, joined with the other clergy
of the village in a day of fasting and prayer. 202

Perhaps the most explosive battle of the period was that fought by
the Observer against the succession of worldly-wise editors who strug-

197 Observer, May 28, June n, 1830.

358 Craftsman, Mar. 10, 1829; Advertiser, Oct. 31, 1829; Observer, Nov. 5,
1830; Pitt Morse, Sermons in Vindication of Universalism in reply to . . . Joel
Parker of Rochester (Watertown, 1831).

199 Rev. Orlo J. Price, "One Hundred Years of Protestantism in Rochester,"
R. H. S., Pub., XH, 257-291.

200 Observer, Apr. 16, 1830; also subsequent issues.

201 Enquirer, Sept. 15, 1829; Advertiser, Sept. 16, 1829; Directory (1834), p. 9.

202 Advertiser, June 21, 1832; Rev. Frederick J. Zwierlein, "One Hundred \ ears
of Catholicism in Rochester," R. H. S., Pub., Xin, 194-197.

196 THE WATER-POWER CITY

gled for a foothold In Rochester. The literature of "Bobby" Owen and
"Fanny" Wright was circulating through the area, endangering the
minds of the young, as the Observer warned, expressing joy when
Orestes A. Brownson gave up the attempt to establish a Fanny Wright
paper in nearby LeRoy. 203 Rochester soon had Its own papers of this
variety, and though most were fleeting, one or another of them proved
a fairly constajit annoyance to the pious editors of the Observer. The
first, Plain Truth? 4 was published semi-monthly during the summer of
1828 by the booksellers Marshall and Dean, but its attempts "to un
mask the frauds and crimes committeed under the guise of Bible, mis
sionary, and other religious societies" quickly brought its downfall.
The Spirit of the Age, published by two editors from Canandaigua, was
advertised as semi-literary and semi-reform in character, while the re
vived Paul Pry featured striking bits of gossip best printed anony
mously. 205

More important was the Craftsman, founded and maintained as a
defender of Masonry, but equally valiant in championing other un
popular causes. The editor, Elijah J. Roberts, crossed swords not only
with the Observer, but also with O Reilly on the Republican. The latter s
desire to see the Antimasonic controversy die after the surrender of the
local Masonic charters was not shared by Roberts, who demanded a
complete vindication of the fraternity. Friction developed again when
the Republican and the Craftsman each accused the other of turning
the Mutual Association and the imprisonment-for-debt issue to political
ends. 206 In any case, O Reilly emerged as the local Jacksonian leader,
while Roberts, having failed in his successive tussles with Weed of the
Anti-Masonic Enquirer, Chipman of the Observer, and O Reilly of the
Republican, left for Buffalo in 1831 at the end of a two-year struggle. 207

Disapproval of the fanaticism engendered by revivals found expres
sion in a public meeting at McCracken s Inn in January, 1831. Between
six and seven hundred persons gathered to protest laws against "hunting,
fishing, sporting and playing" on the Sabbath, as well as the additional
restraints advocated by the Pioneers. The Friends of Liberal Principles,
claiming -an increase in numbers over similar gatherings in earlier years,
condemned the practice of imprisonment for debt, the requirement of

203 Observer, Sept. 17, Nov. 26, 1830; see Leopold, Robert Dale Owen, pp. 65-
102; Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Orestes A. Brownson, A Pilgrim s Progress
(Boston, 1939).

^^ Album, Apr. 8, 1828; Craftsman, Mar. 31, 1829.

205 Craftsman, Mar. 31, Oct. 13, 1829.

206 Craftsman, Sept. 24, Oct. 13, 1829.

207 Observer, June 5, 1829; Enquirer, June 15, 1830; Advertiser, Jan. 27, 1830;
Democrat, Jan. 10, 1843; Hamilton, The Country Printer, pp. 294-295. After two
struggling years in Buffalo, Roberts moved on to Detroit where he enjoyed a more
successful career.

CREATING A CITY 197

religious oaths in legal matters, and warned against the far-reaching
activities of Bible and tract societies. 206 The proposed National Christian
Party was branded a threat to the liberties of the people. 200 But the
death of Josiah Bissell a few months later 21 removed the chief Rochester
proponent of the more extreme reform measures, while the conclusion
of Finney s revival at the same time provided a sorely needed breathing
spell for both sides.

Yet the MI was not of long duration. The more strictly political
journals, preparing for the coming election, sought to avoid controversy
with the Observer, which continued its crusade unabated, but a new
paper, the Liberal Advocate, invaded the town early in 1832 as an
avowed foe of "sectarian dogma and prejudice." 211 Obediah Dogberry,
the editor, coining from Palmyra where his Reflector had roused much
criticism, proceeded to court opposition in Rochester. Warning was
given of an attempt to treat the community to a "second edition of the
Finney excitement." A new revival had indeed started, and a fresh
attack upon groceries prompted Dogberry to declare his support of
"temperance in all things including opinions/ 3 lamenting its absence
from this "gospel hardened" town. 212 Heaping scorn upon the Observer
for advising Christian maidens not to endanger their eternal happiness
by marrying unbelievers, Dogberry blamed the protracted meetings for
distracting attention from civic and commercial affairs. On the other
hand, religious minorities attracted his forbearance, and when a report
reached Rochester that Joseph Smith, Dogberry s former neighbor
in Palmyra ? had been coated with tar and feathers, the Liberal Ad
vocate protested. 213

The fires of evangelism and the tempers of its opponents burned less
intensely after the cholera epidemic of 1832. Though a new "shower"
fell on the Methodist church with the visit of the Reverend Jedediah
Burchard, 214 and similar revivals "refreshed" communities round about,
the Liberal Advocate rejoiced in January, 1833, that

our own "City of Mud" [giving that unhappy cognomen a new twist] has
for some weeks been free from any . . . showers. . . . Backsliding is be
coming the order of the day. . . . The nerves of our citizens have become

208 Proceedings of the Friends of Liberal Principles and Equal Rights in Rochester
January, 1831 (Rochester, 1831) ; see also Leopold, Robert Dale Owen.

209 Craftsman, Mar. 3, 10, 1829.

210 Roch. Republican, Apr. 12, 1831; Observer, Apr. 7, 21, 1831; Henrietta
Bissell to the Rev. C. G. Finney, Rochester, Apr. 16, 1831, photostat in Bissell
autograph folder, Roch. Public Library.

211 Liberal Advocate, Feb. 23, 1832 ; Albert Post, Popular Freethought in America,

P- 59-

212 Liberal Advocate, Mar. 3, 1832.

213 Liberal Advocate, Mar. 10, 24, Apr. 7, 14, 28, 1832.

214 Price, "One Hundred Years of Protestantism," p. 260.

igS THE WATER-POWER CITY

quite tranquil. . . , Upon the whole we congratulate our friends, readers and
borrowers, and the whole world besides, upon the universal happiness which
on every hand surrounds us. 215

Unfortunately, backsliders and borrowers were good omens for
neither the Observer nor the Liberal Advocate. The former, in straitened
circumstances by 1833, sold out and moved to New York, while the
Liberal Advocate continued for another brief year, threatening de
linquent subscribers with the publication of their names in a "black
list" ^ Dogberry enjoyed a parting blast at Rochester s "over ambi
tious church edifices" on which, he declared, more funds had been
lavished than were collected in taxes. 217 The First Presbyterian had lost
a worthy pastor with the departure of Joseph Penney, Dogberry con
ceded; St. Luke s would doubtless be able to pay the debt on its en
larged building, but St. Paul s had already been foreclosed and re
organized as Grace Church, and the Third Presbyterian had been sold
to the Baptists, who, together with the Methodists and the Catholics,
were growing in numbers; still another schism was developing at the
recently established Free (Presbyterian) Church, where the Reverend
Luke Lyons was vainly attempting to revive the excitement of a few
years before with a fresh use of the old "new measures." 21S

With the demise of the Liberal Advocate Rochester s vocal champions
of rationalism disappeared, but the victorious forces of evangelism con
fronted a much sturdier foe, the materialism of returning prosperity.
Even the devoted Ferdinand Ward, youngest son of Dr. Levi Ward, just
back from theological study at Princeton and soon to carry the Word of
God to India, felt baffled by the emerging city:

Indeed I never saw our city so lively as at present. But you may ask, where
is Religion? Alas it is hid Christians have forgotten that they are not
their own and world world is the controlling object of thought and action.
I have preached three times since my return, but nothing would induce me
to remain during the winter. 21 *

^

Happily the distraught townsfolk were able to maintain some of the
color and vitality of their social life even during the height of the suc
cessive revivals. Though the new theater was converted into a livery
stable, the old circus remained, featuring animal shows and varied ex-

215 liberal Advocate, Jan. i, 1833.

^Advertiser, Dec. 30, 1833; Liberal Advocate, Mar. 22, 1834. A similar de
cline marked the free thought movement in the East; see Leopold, Robert Dale
Owen, pp. 119-120.

217 Liberal Advocate, Mar. 31, 1832; Apr. 6, 1834.

218 Liberal Advocate, Apr. 6, July 7, 1834.

219 Ferdinand Ward to Mrs. Freeman Clarke, Rochester, 1834, Clarke Letters;
Barton, Obituary Scrapbook, p. 16.

CREATING A CITY 199

hibitioDs, and in September, 1830, a troupe of actors from the East ? in
cluding young Louisa Lane, future wife of John Drew, played for several
nights before Rochester audiences. Programs of sacred music were
occasionally presented by the leading churches, while the band gave
frequent concerts. 220 The outstanding event in the art field, the display
of William Dunlap s painting of the Crucifixion, evoked lengthy com
ments on its artistic merits. Citizens were urged to pay the admission
fee of 25 cents; Sunday school children were admitted Iree. The declin
ing number of groceries and grog shops cleared the way for soda foun
tains at which the more respectable could seek a refreshing drink. 221

As in earlier years, the simple domestic chores, the everyday affairs of
the canal, the mills, the market place, and the taverns overshadowed
the commercialized amusements. Hamlet Scrantom, now advancing in
years, still set Ms hens and took a special interest in the arrival of a new
calf. 222 Most householders tended their gardens, though "the difficulties
we had last year with Dr. Ward s fowels [sic] and occasionally the in
trusion of pigs and cows among the vegetables" led to greater reliance
on the public market. 223 The occasional arrival from Michigan of a
barrel of radishes packed in ice, or some like novelty, suggested the
future possibilities of the produce trade, but generally farmers on the
edge of town, not yet a mile distant from any house, supplied house
hold demands.

These everyday aspects of Rochester s life found their best chronicler
in young Edwin Scrantom, who had literally grown up with the town.
Early in 1829 he established a quaint little publication, the Gem,
dedicated to the literary and domestic interests of the community. 224
In the course of a year its first thirteen subscribers increased to over
five hundred, 225 permitting the editor to enlarge its size, and include
occasional engravings of romantic scenes. Though he paused from time
to time to deprecate the intensity of local political and religious dis
putes, Scrantom was ever ready to describe the pageantry about him.
On one occasion he reported:

220 O > ReiIly, Sketches of Rochester, p. 317; Gem, Sept 25, 1830; Advertiser,
Apr. 26, May 5, 10, 1830.

221 Gem, Aug. 14, Oct. 30, 1830; William Dunlap, A History of the Rise and
Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States (originally printed in 1834,
republished in 1918, Frank W. Bailey, ed.), pp. 354-355. Dunlap had paid three
earlier visits to Rochester.

222 EL Scrantom, Journal, April, May, 1830, MS, Roch. Hist. Soc.

223 J. M. Schermerhorn to his wife, Charleston, S. C., Mar. 21, 1833, Schermer-
horn Letters.

224 Gem, 1829-1843 (known as The Gem and Ladies 1 Amulet from Jan. 10,
1835, on). The Gem followed an earlier periodical, the Western Wanderer and
Ladies Literary Magnet, of which but one or two issues were produced in Febru
ary, 1829.

225 Gem. Dec. 26, 1829.

200 THE WATER-POWER CITY

We were present when the water was let into the CanaL It was an interest
ing sight to hundreds who had been waiting for the event. There were in
scores, boatmen with their painted hats and everlasting coats, marching to
and fro, making remarks upon the canal, &c. There were also, the impudent
drivers with hats turned up before, and whips tip d with plenty of silk. 5
There were groupes of second hand captains . . . together with various
other groupes, that seemed all interested in the filling up of the big ditch. 3
We could see that many a rusty bugle had been brightened for the coming
season. . . . The dealers in small wares, that line the canal in the summer
season, were all in motion, brightening up their cook-rooms, and buying up
a stock.* Among this class, a variety of kegs and bottles made glad the
hearts of the wanton and inveterate. 228

Several more ambitious efforts were made to exploit the local scene
for literary ends. The Gem printed "The Warrior Chief/ a frontier tale
set in the Rochester area but lacking other interest. 227 The cool recep
tion accorded two early attempts by traveling actors to dramatize local
subjects for their Rochester audiences discouraged further efforts in
that field. 228 Worthy of note, however, was the lengthy Rochester: A
Satire written in verse in the Scottish brogue by James Mathies, brother
of the town s colorful art patron and tavern keeper. Rochester was most
unfortunate in the early death of the youthful bard, who

Being indispos d and in the dumps,
Ane night I strolTd amang the stumps,
I saw gay steeds wf spotted rumps

Performing Circus,
And lads and lassies round in clumps,

Real bonny smirkies. 229

The most important use of the Rochester area in fiction was Lawrie
Todd by the Englishman, John Gait. The story, although written with
out careful study of the setting, caught some of the spirit of the early
years. Yet it attracted scant notice in Rochester during the thirties,
for the town was scarcely old enough to romanticize its pioneers. 230

The activities of its frontier days were being displaced by new
amusements. Despite the protest of Sabbath reformers, horse cars
carried many a gay party down to Carthage on that day, while lake

226 Gem, Apr. 16, 1831.

227 Gem, Dec. 12, 1829.

228 The first dramatic season had concluded in 1826 with a "new melodrama
. . . written in this village, The Vale of the Genesee, or Big Tree Chief, 5 " Roch.
Republican, June 13, 1826. C. S. Talbot s Captain Morgan has already been noted,

P- 145-

229 James Mathies, Rochester; A Satire; and Other Miscellaneous Poems
(Rochester, 1830).

230 John Gait, Lawrie Todd (New York, 1830); Advertiser, Jan. 7, 1833; Jane
M. Parker, "Lawrie Todd," R. H. S., Pub., IV, 223-227.

CREATING A CITY 201

excursions were occasionally enjoyed. The North Rochester races pro
vided excitement for three days late in 1832, and on another occasion
a group of boisterous young men took a "boat ride" over the snow-
covered streets of the village. Frequent visits to nearby Monroe and
Avon Springs supplied variety, if not always the health and entertain
ment advertised. 331

Travel for health and diversion was becoming a definite part of the
program of those who could afford it. Saratoga, Florida, and even
Europe loomed on the horizon, though barely a half-dozen Rochesterians
journeyed so far in this period. Before setting out for St. Augustine in
the late fall of 1832, J. M. Schermerhorn prepared his will. On the
leisurely trip down he visited his friends, Finney and Weld, in New
York, and on reaching St. Augustine, Florida, was pleased to find,
among the twenty-two Americans stopping there, three clergymen who
said grace at every meal and provided religious instruction at all times,
resulting in the happy conversion of two of the guests. Journeying back
by horseback, he stopped in Charleston long enough to write his wife
asking her to pray for that wicked city. 232

Dr. Anson Colman, after earlier medical studies in Boston, Phila
delphia, and Montreal, spent several weeks in the medical centers of
London and Paris. There he marvelled at the remarkable development
of public museums, galleries, and charitable institutions, as well as at
the deplorable lack of individual comforts. The cheapness of life and
the congested living arrangements astounded him, while other features
impelled him to advise his pastor, Dr. Whitehouse, never to come to
Paris, as "he would see so much of the vice and hypocrisy of this
country as to depress his spirits for the rest of his life." Yet his foot
loose brother-in-law and companion, Nathaniel T. Rochester, be
coming "travelling mad," was soon out of reach in Italy or Germany,
forcing the impatient doctor to return alone. 233

Rochester seemed a welcome haven to its returning citizens. "Never
in our country . . . will it be possible to rear and sustain the im
mense institutions" of Paris or London, declared Dr. Colman without
regret, though he had found sermons and "food fit for man" at the
latter place. The comforts of his Rochester home were much more
agreeable, and he could not understand his wife s pleasure in a trip
down the St. Lawrence to Quebec and by stage through the Eastern
states to Baltimore. The cares of his household taking the children to
school, directing the activities of three household servants, attending

281 Liberal Advocate, Mar. 3, May 25, Oct. 13, Nov. 3, 1832; Rock. Republican,
Aug. 14, Sept. 4, 1832.

232 J. M. Schermerhorn to Ms wife, October, i832-April, 1833, Schermerliorn
Letters.

283 Colman Letters, January-May, 1833.

202 THE WATER-POWER CITY

all the meals in order to maintain a properly ordered family proved a
strain when added to Ms growing practice. He vowed never again to
consent to the unnecessary absence of Ms wife. 284

Few townsfolk were so fortunately situated as the members of the
Rochester clan after the settlement of the will left by the aged pro
prietor, who passed away quietly at his Spring Street home in May,
1 83 1. 235 Yet many others enjoyed comfortable circumstances. House
hunting no longer presented the discouragements of the early days, for
builders had begun to catch up with the more moderate population
growth. J. M. "Schermerhorn, debating the respective merits of two
comfortable residences with four rooms on both floors and a front and
back stairway, advised his wife not to order a piano from the East as
one could be rented for a time in Rochester. 236 Drafty fireplaces were
giving place to Franklin stoves, and the more particular housewives,
refusing to admit stove pipes into their parlors, were insisting if trust
can be placed in a furnace advertisement on a coal furnace in the cellar
from wMch the whole house could be heated by hot air. 237

The great majority shared few of these comforts. Even when the
Chemung Canal tapped a new coal supply, bringing the price down
from eleven to five dollars a ton, 238 workmen who made at best only
four or five hundred dollars a year could not afford the luxury of a
furnace or a house of more than four rooms. A workman could get a
dollar a day for seasonal labor on neighboring farms, wMle skilled
mechanics could expect something better in town, but the demand of
boat caulkers for two dollars a day in 1831 was considered unreason
able. If one had a grown daughter to hire out as a domestic, five to
seven dollars a month could be added to the family income, and of
course garden space was generally available. The town averaged slightly
more than one cow and two pigs to each household. 239

In the transition from village to city the problem of the working day
began to emerge. Thus in 1833, when the carpenters, among others,
sought to limit their hours to ten a day, 240 many warned that idleness
and intemperance would result. Mechanics were still primarily ap
prentices or hired men, walking to and from work with the boss and not
infrequently boarding at his house. A few journeymen s associations

Letters, Jan. 18, Apr. 22, Oct. 13, 1833.

235 Rock. Republican, May 17, 1831; Enquirer, May 24, 1831; Charles A. Dewey,
"Nathaniel Rochester," R. H. S., Pub., Ill, 276.

286 J. M. Schermerhorn to his wife, Rochester, Sept. 7, 1831, Schermerhorn
Letters.

237 Genesee Farmer, Jan. 26, 1833.

*** Genesee Farmer, Jan. 26, 1833.

239 Joseph Webb to his family in England, Rochester, Oct. 26, 1833, typed copy,
Roch. Hist. Soc.; Advertiser, Mar. 17, 1831; N. Y. Census (1835).

240 Advertiser, Apr. 9, 1833; Democrat, Apr. 18, 1834.

CREATING A CITY 203

were organizing on Eastern models, but the girls in the local cotton
factory showed no inclination to follow the lead of their striking sisters
in Lowell. 241 The Court House bell and the tower clock installed in the
First Presbyterian Church in 1831 provided the first public time
standards other than Old Sol, except on the Sabbath when the "solemn
ding donging of the several church bells" contributed a sober orderli
ness. 242

An excellent view of the bustling town was preserved by an observant
citizen, possibly Edwin Scrantom, who stationed himself in the ob
servatory over the Arcade at daybreak one June morning in the early
thirties. The "venders of eatables" and the "milkman s cart" first
appeared, quickly followed by "an heterogeneous mass of men, all
wending their way to market." Soon the mechanics and the merchants
walked briskly to work. "About seven, the various buildings sent forth
their representatives to breakfast. Then could be seen the yet slumber
ing clerks reclining upon the boxes outside the doors, or stretched at full
length on the counters during the absence of their employers." About ten
arrived the creaking farm wagons, loaded with "wheat, corn, oats, apples,
potatoes, butter, cheese and every thing that we poor cits could not
live without." Amidst the hubbub of "bartering and bargaining, buying
and selling" appeared several ladies bedecked with "formidable head
pieces and popish sleeves," for it was the fashionable hour for a
promenade. "The clink of the hammer was suspended for a time . . .
when the bell rang for twelve" bringing out the "mechanics en masse,
preparing for dinner." About one, "the merchants and gentlemen of the
profession were seen with a hurried step" heading for home, whence
they returned an hour later "with each his cigar half smoked and com
menced the business of the afternoon with all the zeal imaginable." A
few beggars scurried from door to door, and at three several "exquisites,
disguised with sugar-loaf hats, frizzled hair, tights, eau de Cologne,
and black gloves," strolled to dine in accordance with the "European
taste." The hours from three to five were filled with "noise and con
fusion, bustle and business. Ladies, dandies, gentlemen, children, dogs,
horses, carts, wagons, trucks, stages . . . kept alive the streets." At
five the farmers began to leave and the school children came bounding
along the streets. At six everybody hastened to supper except those
who were impatiently waiting for the postman to sort the mail. The
author of "A Day in the Observatory" eagerly joined the latter group. 243

Yet, despite its bustle, Rochester was remembered as a quiet and
orderly town by one young prodigal who found himself in a giddy whirl

241 Advertiser and Telegraph, Nov. 20, 1829; Liberal Advocate, Mar. 22, Apr. 6,

1834-

242 Gem, Aug. 13, 1831; Liberal Advocate, July 21, 1832.

, June 26, 1830.

204 THE WATER-POWER CITY

at Detroit a few years later. 244 Yankee traditions, aided by the business
recession and the successive religious revivals, had subdued the Genesee
boom town of the mid-twenties, and the community was ready to assume
its urban responsibilities with a sober mien which could not, however,
hide from view the city s youthful vigor and inexperience.

244 Old Reub to Frances M. Fox, Detroit, May 18, 1834, MS, Roch. Hist. Soc.

CHAPTER VIII

FLOUR CITY: PROSPERITY AND ADVERSITY

1834-1850 *

THE NEWLY-ESTABLISHED CITY enjoyed several years of surging
optimism before the nation-wide depression of the late thirties
brought renewed hardships. Earlier preoccupation with political
and religious matters gave way to an increased interest in the town s
economic activities. With few exceptions the outstanding personalities
were practical men of affairs. Matthew Brown, Levi Ward, and Abelard
Reynolds carried on for several years, but younger men were pressing
to the fore: Jonathan Child, Jacob Gould, Elisha Johnson, Hervey Ely,
Abraham Schermerhorn, James Seymour, Samuel L. Selden, Henry
O Reilly, and a host of new arrivals and sons of the founders. Dark
days lay ahead for most of these men, several of whom left Rochester
before the end of the period. Fortunately those who remained, together
with many able newcomers, successfully guided the Flour City through
its protracted depression, enabling the community to achieve a measure
of economic stability by the mid-century.

YEARS OF GROWTH: 18341837

As Rochesterians became aware of the necessity for improving their
transport facilities, the enlargement of the Erie Canal, the improvement
of the Genesee port, the opening of a new canal up the valley, and the
construction of several new railroad lines emerged as major objectives.
Though local enterprise hastily shouldered a portion of the burden, gov
ernment aid was sought for work on the river and canal. With federal
funds already contributing to harbor improvements at Buffalo and
Oswego, it appeared only fitting that nearly $50,000 from the same
source be expended during the decade on an extension of the pier at
the mouth of the Genesee and the provision of a pier light, thus en
abling Rochester to maintain an active lake trade. 2

1 As in the previous chapters, I am again indebted to several unpublished
master s theses at the University of Rochester for careful surveys of these years:
Herbert A. Norton, "Prosperity and Adversity: A History of Rochester, 1834-
1839" (1938) J George M. Fennimore, "The Growth of a City: A History of
Rochester, 1839-1843" (1938) ; Allan Gleason, "History of Labor in Rochester to

1884" (1941).

2 Rochester Daily Democrat, Mar. 27, 1835; Rochester Republican, Apr. 18,
June 27, 1837; July 17, 1838.

206 THE WATER-POWER CITY

The city s commercial prospects, however, were more closely tied
to the Erie Canal, which already began to develop serious flaws. Not
only was the sandstone of the much-boasted aqueduct crumbling under
exposure, causing serious leaks and threatening the safety of the whole
structure, 3 but the seventeen-foot channel proved too narrow for the
passing of boats, with the result that one-way traffic was enforced, stall
ing long lines of waiting boats along the canal on both sides of the river.
The owners of the principal boat lines, led by Jonathan Child and
represented by Henry O Reilly as agent in Albany, boldly recommended
a new aqueduct. 4 Many advocates of economy urged the merits of a
wooden trunk built on the old piers (as in the Mohawk aqueducts
further east), while others favored a pond-crossing behind a dam sure
to be adequate in case of an enlargement of the entire canal. 6 After
prolonged debate, a new stone aqueduct was determined upon, to be
located just south of the old structure but turned at an angle so as to
improve the approach from the east. Renewed delays held up construc
tion until insistent demands, expressed in frequent memorials and at a
canal enlargement convention at Rochester in 1837, finally brought
action that year. 6

An even more protracted agitation urged a canal up the Genesee
Valley. When the project was first proposed in the early twenties,
Rochester gave only mUd support, but a growing desire for trade con
nections with the Ohio Valley and the hope of reaching a coal supply
quickened the Flour City s interest. 7 The possible advantages of a rail
road were discounted, despite the economy of construction, 8 since the
proposed artery was to carry heavy freight for which the light railroads
of the day were scarcely adapted. Support for the Rochester and Olean
canal developed in New York City, aroused by the recent completion
of the Pennsylvania State Canal and Railway, joining Philadelphia with

8 Assembly Documents (1836), No. 9, quoting a state geological report on the
stone of the aqueduct.

4 Jonathan Child, et al. t to Henry O Reilly, Rochester, Feb. 14, 1834, O ReiUy
MSS, N. Y. Hist. Soc.; Democrat, Feb. 22, 1834.

5 Assembly Doc. (1834), No. 55, pp. 7, 8; Assembly Journal (1834), pp. 170,
929, 1036; James Renwick, Report on the Mode of Supplying the Erie Canal with
Water from Lockport to the Cayuga Marshes (Rochester, 1846).

6 Assembly Doc. (1836), No. 65, 99; Assembly Journal (1837), pp. 282, 305.

7 Whitford, History of the Canal System of New York, I, 708-727; As
sembly Journal (1825), pp. 200, 921; (1827), pp. 21, 306; Republican, Dec. 29,
1829; Jan. 19, 26, 1830; Advertiser, Jan. 7, 1831; Senate Doc. (1834), No. 55;
Assembly Doc. (1836), No. 140.

8 Advertiser, Jan. 7, 1831, A canal would cost $10,000 to $12,000 a mile and a
railroad only $3,000 to $5,000 as then estimated; actually the construction cost of
the Genesee Valley Canal, the Tonawanda, and the Rochester and Auburn rail
roads averaged approximately $27,000, $17,000, and $23,000 per mile respectively,
as calculated for their completed portions in 1843. See Hunt s Merchants Magazine,
XH (1845), 382; Xni (1845), 58-59-

FLOUR CITY: PROSPERITY AND ADVERSITY 207

distant Pittsburgh. A careful survey in 1835 estimated the cost of con
struction at $1,824,000, and despite hesitation the work finally com
menced two years later. 9

While the fate of these improvements still awaited state action,
Rochester capital boldly pressed forward with the construction of the
railroad to Batavia. Jonathan Child, Abraham Schermerhorn, and
Frederick Whittlesey became prominent backers, with Elisha Johnson
as construction engineer. A single track line, built of two parallel
timbers, each mounted with a light strip of metal, and held in place by
cross ties every ten feet, advanced over the 32-mile route at an average
first cost of $10,000 a mile. 10 Five years after the grant of its charter the
road opened with two wood-burning engines brought by canal boat from
the East. Unfortunately the gala celebration on May ir, 1837, was
clouded by the somber reports of bank suspensions throughout the
land. 1 *

Charters for other rail lines in the Rochester area, sought during
these years, 12 included two on the southern border of the county, 13 but
the rail project of chief interest to the city after the Tonawanda, was
that proposing to connect Rochester and Auburn. Though Canandaigua
and Geneva investors eagerly demanded action, jealousy over the
route coupled with the objections of canal interests enforced delay.
Even after the continuous agitation following the first survey in 1830 14
secured the necessary legislation in i836, 15 construction dragged, post
poning completion of the first section between Rochester and Canandai
gua until September, i84O. 16

^

Fortunately Rochester was throbbing with more than future trans
port projects in the mid-thirties. Despite the imperfect character of their
facilities, trade on both the canal and lake boomed, while stage lines ,
increased in number and popularity. Boat lines supplied a major field
for local enterprise, with $315,000 of Rochester capital invested in
nineteen such companies in 1835, though only one, the Pilot and Traders

9 Senate Journal (1834), pp. 106, 260; (1836), pp. 287, 453, 461.

10 Report upon the Tonawanda Rail-Road Company t Exhibiting its Present
Situation and Future Prospects (Rochester, 1837).

"u-Roch* Republican, May 9, 16, 1837; Edward Hungerford, Men and Iron
(New York, 1938), pp. 41-47.

^Assembly Journal (1834), pp. 60, 268, 300, 343, 892, 1003; (1836), p. 95;
Assembly Doc. (1836), No. 91.

13 Elisha Johnson to P. Sampson, Batavia, Mar. 29, 1836, Autograph Letters,
Roch. Hist. Soc.

14 Republican, Sept. 28, 1830, Sept. 13, 20, 1831; Democrat, Mar. 20, Dec. 20,
Dec. 30, 1834.

15 Democrat, Mar. 3, Dec. 23, 1835; Jan. 4, May 3, 17, June 7, 1836.

16 Republican,- June 13, July 4, 1837, Mar. 27, July 12, Oct. 16, 1838, May 7,
14, June 18, Aug. 3, 1839; Advertiser, Sept. n, 1840.

208 THE WATER-POWER CITY

line of Jonathan Child, was owned entirely in the city. 17 Six yards kept
these lines supplied with new boats, while some twenty forwarding
companies, frequently operating in conjunction with a boat line, com
peted for Rochester s trade, but the city no longer provided their chief
headquarters. 18

The Genesee lake port enjoyed a marked increase in tolls, which
mounted from $884.48 in 1834 to $59,116 in iSjd. 19 Genesee tariff
receipts exceeded those of all but one other lake port, 20 yet the shipping
activity could not compare with Oswego s large export trade or Buffalo s
still larger traffic on the upper lakes. 21 Nevertheless, the 400 arrivals of
lake boats in 1836, landing a cargo valued at $235,701 (including
200,000 bushels of wheat) and carrying away articles worth $209,844,
while but a fraction of Buffalo s commerce, served the Flour City well as
a supplement to the canal. 22

Rochester s shipments over the Erie still ranked first in value west
of the Hudson, totaling $3,518,335 in 1837, though in tonnage Buffalo,
Rome, and Montezuma exceeded the Flour City. 23 Rochester s tolls
likewise excelled, but this fact proved less significant, since most of its
shipments paid for the long haul to Albany, whereas Buffalo s wheat
was usually consigned to the Rochester mills. Yet the steady increase in
its toll receipts afforded a sure indication of the city s stable growth.
Although the first depression year brought a slight decline, it did not
equal that at other ports. 24 Flour, valued at just over $2,000,000 in 1837,
exceeded the total value of all other exports and comprised a good
fourth of the flour shipped down the Hudson. Next in importance came
merchandise, furniture, ashes, and wheat, revealing the extent to which
Rochester drew its products from the Genesee Country. Only mer
chandise, coal, iron, and sundries arrived from the East in sizable
quantities. 25

The limited character of Rochester s commercial prospects became
apparent as those of Buffalo expanded. Many Rochesterians were
drawn to Buffalo by its more rapid growth in the early thirties. Such
migrants in 1835 included Hamlet Scrantom, Rochester s aging pioneer,

17 Henry O Reilly, Rochester in 1835: Brief Sketches (Rochester, 1835), p. 10.
^Democrat, Nov. 21, 1836; Jan. 4, 1837.

lfi Democrat, Feb. 9, 1835; Nov. 21, ,1836; Jan. 4, 1837; Report upon the
Tonawanda Rail-Road, p. 13.

^O Reilly, Rochester in 1835, p. n.

21 Senate Doc. (1838), No. 35, Stmt. loB. Buffalo lake shipments including
both loadings and unloadings for 1836 were valued at $3,404,612, and those of
Oswego at $2,089,204.

22 Report upon the Tonawanda Rail-Road, p. 13; Democrat, May 12, 1834;
July 7, 1835; Jan. 4, 1836; Jan. 4, 1837; Apr. 28, Dec. 4, 1841.

23 Senate Doc. (1838) , No. 35, Stmt. 8.

24 Henry O Reilly, Sketches of Rochester, p. 242. The tolls had increased from
$164,247 in 1834 to $190,036 hi 1836 and fell to $179,083 in 1837.
^Senate Doc. (1838), No. 35, Stmts. lA, iB, 8.

FLOUR CITY: PROSPERITY AND ADVERSITY 209

whose tMrd son, as editor of the Gem, judiciously weighed the advantages
of both places:

Weil BUFFALO is quite a place after all It is true you hear none of the
clatter of the vast variety of machinery, of which Rochester is so proud, nor
are her streets so densely crowded with the wagons and horses of agricultural
visitors; but all the peculiar features of a great commercial place are here
developed. The forest of masts the schooners, ships and steamboats
which line her docks, give her an air of greatness which Rochester can never
put on. 28

Nevertheless, Edwin Scrantom and two of his brothers continued to re
side in Rochester.

The flour mills, numbering twenty-one by 1835, with ninety-six run
of stone, comprised the most important of the numerous manufactories
of the city. Occasional fires cleared the ground for the construction of
larger mills, thus increasing the number of millstones and the potential
capacity, though the number of mills remained fairly constant. The
annual output approached 500,000 barrels during the late thirties
second to Baltimore, the leading flour market with upwards of 600,000
to its credit. 27 But flour held a more conspicuous place in the economic
life of Rochester than in that of Baltimore, third largest city hi the
country according to the 1840 census, and a sense of pride developed as
Rochester s millers gained wide recognition.

-*

"The principal capital is borrowed in the flouring business in this
place/ 7 declared the sister of Judge Samuel Lee Selden in 1838 when
urging her husband to abandon his military career and turn to milling
in Rochester. Silas O. Smith, she reported, was willing to rent half of
his flouring mill, containing eight run of stones, at $1500 a year, to a
partner who would likewise supply half the operating capital, possibly
$5000 to start with. Only two years as a miller s assistant would be
required to learn the business, "a drudgery which might not be so fine
for one . . . accustomed to command," the Judge thought, but once the
initiatory process were completed he and his friends could easily raise
the necessary capital. Indeed the prospect appeared so favorable that
Mrs. Eaton proceeded to select a suitable bouse, standing in the middle
of a lot on State Street, surrounded by fine fruit trees, with a barn,
woodhouse, and hen coop in the rear, which she learned would be for
rent in the spring at $200 a year. 28

However, as the city s leading publicist, Henry O Reilly, declared

26 Rochester Gem and Ladies Amulet, Sept. 9, 1837.

^Hunt s Merchants Magazine, IV (1841), 194-195; O Reilly, Rochester in

*835, PP- 5-6-

^Elisabeth S. S. Eaton to her husband, Rochester, Dec. 8, 1837; Jan. 31, Feb.
5, Apr. 27, 1838, E. S. S. Eaton Letters, courtesy of Mrs. Elizabeth Selden Rogers,
New York City.

2io THE WATER-POWER CITY

in 1835, "The flouring business, although it is that for which Rochester
is at present most celebrated, is by no means of such importance to the
real welfare of the city as the other branches of manufactures." Twenty-
five different industrial categories, with a total capitalization estimated
at least to equal that of the flour mills, upwards of $500,000, supplied
the bustle that ranked the Flour City next to Pittsburgh and Cincinnati
among the interior industrial centers of I835. 29 To the cooper shops,
lumber mills, and boatyards were added cabinet, furniture, and carriage
factories, whose products found ready sale throughout the area. The
carpet factory, destroyed in the bridge fire of 1834 but rebuilt the next
year, gave employment to forty-odd persons, one of the largest labor
forces in the city. 30 Two woolen mills and an increased activity among
sheep raisers, who reported flocks numbering 600,000 in the Genesee
Country in 1835, made Rochester an important wool market with
Aaron Erickson as its leading merchant. 31 Two large tanneries, several
leatherworkers, and twenty boot- and shoemakers provided profitable
employment and easily marketable articles, as did a paper mill and
numerous printing establishments. Twenty-two tailors produced to order
while three large "emporiums of fashion" solicited the trade of busy
travelers on Exchange Street. 32 Increased coal, supplied by way of the
Erie and Chenango Canals, spurred the expansion of foundries and
trip-hammer shops, and a hollow-ware factory made its appearance. 88
One firm, a loose joint-stock association, headed by Lewis Selye, who
undertook to raise a capital of $100,000 in 1835, began the manu
facture of railroad cars, fire engines, and eventually locomotives and
other machinery for the expanding industries of the area. 84

Considerable ingenuity was revealed in the economic developments
of the period. Some forty inventions by local mechanics were registered
in the patent office before 1837. Thus the problems of weighing canal
boats, propelling them by steam, threshing and mashing grain, pumping
water, preserving hides, and pegging shoes, all received attention, while
a locally-invented stump extractor, marketed at $75, gained wide use
in the area, 35 Rochester editors, particularly those of the Genesee

^O Reilly, Rochester in 1835, pp. 6-9; [Michael H. Jenks], "Notes of a Tour
Through the Western Part of the State of New York, 1829-30," The Ariel, 1829-30.
80 O Reilly, Rochester in 1835, pp. 6-9; Genesee Farmer, V (1835), 79.

31 Hunt s Merchants Magazine, XVI (1847), 104-^105; N. Y. Census (1835);
Monthly Genesee Farmer, 1TL (1838), 60.

32 Henry O Reilly, "Rochester at the End of 1836," Democrat, Jan. 4, 1837;
Rochester Directory (1838).

^Democrat, Sept. 22, 1835; Apr. i, 1840,

34 MS, Everard Peck folder, Autograph Letters.

85 Rochester Post Express, Jan. 29, 1894; see Osgood Collection, MSS, III, No.
65. Roch. Hist. Soc., for a list of 65 early inventions patented from western New
York; A. D. Jennings, MSS.

FLOUR CITY: PROSPERITY AND ADVERSITY 211

Farmer, gave frequent advice to farmers on crop rotation, the use of
fertilizers, and the merits of varied root and horticultural crops. 36 A
seed store and several small nurseries appeared in the mid-thirties. After
the demise of a Monroe County Horticultural Society, which held several
annual fairs in the city, a Genesee Valley Horticultural Society, or
ganized in 1839, carried on the effort to develop the area s resources. 87

Agitation for improved labor conditions likewise appeared. The desire
of workingmen for a standardized ten-hour day was voiced by the
Journeymen Carpenters and Joiners Society and by the Journeymen
Masons, who argued that the system had already been adopted in Troy,
Utica, and Buffalo. But a Builders 5 Association successfully resisted the
demand, contending that the short winter days compensated for the
longer hours demanded in summer. 38 Meanwhile a Cooper Union Society
sought to protect its local market by warning fellow craftsmen else
where that the output of Rochester barrel factories had already de
pressed local wages. 39

The constant stream of immigrants and migrating Americans made
an organized stand for either wages or hours extremely difficult.
Standards were more dependent upon the balance between supply and
demand. Thus, farmers in the vicinity could get workmen for eight or
twelve dollars a month and their keep, except during the harvest season
when a dollar or more a day was demanded. But it proved hard to hold
such helpers. In the city or on the canal, when a job had to be com
pleted quickly or steady labor was necessary, wages sometimes reached
$1.25 or better a day. Clerks with some responsibilities could expect
$400 to $500 a year, and regular male teachers about the same. 40

Among the sixteen principal cities, Rochester afforded employment to
20 per cent of its citizens, well above the average, particularly in in
dustry and trade. Clerking became a major occupation as the stores
exceeded two hundred by the end of the decade, representing an in
vestment comparable to that in industry. 41 Manufacturing and trade
together employed 2916 persons; commerce and navigation, 759; and
agriculture, 236 within the city limits. 42 Mercantile and industrial es
tablishments lined Buffalo, Exchange, State, Front, and Main streets or
crowded about the millraces and canal basins. 48 Stumps still dotted the

^Genesee Farmer, IV (1834), 41; VII (-1837), 247; IX (1839), 31.

37 Genesee Farmer, IX: 26; Blake McKelvey, "The Flower City," R, H. S., Pub. t
XVIII, 125-130.

** Advertiser, Apr. 9, 1833; Jan. 17, 1835; Democrat, Apr. 18, 1834; Mar. 9,
Apr. 30, 1835.

89 Republican, July 26, 1836.

^Ephraim Lacy, "Lacy Farm Account Book" (Caledonia, 1849-1852), MS,
Roch. Pub. Lib.; Advertiser, Apr. 2, June 28, 1844.

^Hunt s Merchants Magazine, TV (1841), 484-485; N. Y. Census (1845).

42 Hunt s Merchants Magazine, VH (1842), 339. **N. Y, Census (1835).

212 THE WATER-POWER CITY

cleared fields on the outskirts, but ambitious "improvements" received
the attention of William A. Reynolds, the Schermerhorn and the Mo
Cracken brothers. Colonel Ashbel Riley, and young Josiah W. Bissell, 44
as well as most of the earlier promoters. Except for James S. Wadsworth,
Charles Perkins, and John Greig, who now began the development of
subdivisions, practically all of the realtors were personally resident at
Rochester so that a major portion of the profits derived from the
rising lot values remained in the city/ further stimulating its growth. A
brisk sale of city lots continued through 1836, including business loca
tions and water-power rights as well as home sites a sure sign of the
town s prosperity. 45

-4

The one factor which never appeared sufficient to meet the needs of
the community was its bank credit. The experience of those who in
corporated the Rochester City Bank in 1836 matched that of the two
earlier banks, when the capitalization, fixed at $400,000, was over
subscribed fivefold, 46 yet the application for a mechanics bank was
again rejected, compelling Rochester to stretch its banking capital of
$1,050,000 a long way. 47 Fortunately the canal board continued to de
posit between $200,000 and $300,000 annually in local banks. 48 Eastern
capitalists, notably John Jacob Astor, extended credit which frequently
reached considerable proportions. The New York Life Insurance Com
pany loaned over $100,000 on bonds and mortgages in Monroe County
during 1835 and $213,063 on other terms, 49 while the organization by
Levi A. Ward and Jacob Gould of the Monroe County Mutual Insurance
Company in 1836 provided an additional credit source. 50 The small
individual savings deposited in the Rochester Savings Bank totalled
$100,000 in i83S. 51 When distribution of the surplus treasury funds
by the federal government was finally handed on to the counties by New
York State in January, 1837, Monroe got $142,976.81 as its share. 52

^Genesee Farmer, VI (1836), 79; Benjamin Barton Letters, MSS, Univ. Roch.;
"James Wadsworth/ D. A. B., XIX, 308-309. See the extent of the undeveloped
subdivisions kid out on the map of 1833.

^Republican, Jan. 12, Sept. 6, 13, 20, 1836; Charles Perkins Papers, MSS,
R. P. L. See also the "Greig Papers/ MSS, in the hands of George Skivington,
Scottsville, N. Y., and Neil A. McNalTs "James S. Wadsworth," MS, Cornell Univ.

** Democrat, Dec. 14, 1835,* Mar. 15, June 3, 28, 1836; Republican, July 5,
1836.

47 Assembly Journal (1834), PP- ", 59 J Assembly Doc. (1836), No. 66; Re
publican, Feb. 16, 1836.

^Assembly Doc. (1836), No. 4.

49 Abelard Reynolds bond to John Jacob Astor, Feb. 10, 1835, for $25,000, MS,
Autograph Letters; Assembly Doc. (1835), No. 284.

60 Assembly Journal (1836), pp. 187, 5455 Senate Journal (1836), p. 247; Re
publican, Mar. 20, 1838.

tj Feb, 8, 1836. 5 * Democrat, Jan. 17, 1837.

FLOUR CITY; PROSPERITY AND ADVERSITY 213

Despite constant complaint that these facilities were inadequate for
the city s needs/ 3 many Rochesterians could not resist the temptation
to use some of their funds in distant speculations. Abelard Reynolds,
whose Arcade and other local Investments had proved so fortunate, was
caught up by dreams of a vast fortune and joined with an old New
England friend located at Utica in two ambitious projects In the mid-
thirties. A considerable amount of Rochester and Utica capital was thus
sunk in a Maine land speculation and the Hinsdale town-site promotion,
which burst like many another glossy bubble when the expected trans
port facilities in the latter case the Genesee Valley Canal and the Erie
Railroad were diverted. 54 But the misfortunes of Reynolds and his
friends were matched by those of investors throughout the country In
1837 as gloomy reports came in from all sides.

YEARS OF ADVERSITY: 1837-1843

The panic of 1837 and the depression which followed were national
and international in scope, and though Rochester experienced numerous
hardships, its suffering was not as grievous as that of Buffalo and many
another city. 55 It soon became apparent that Rochester had. profited by
the earlier check in 1829.^ The healthy revival of the mid-thirties had
not yet burst the bounds of reason. Except for a few overventuresome
individuals and the half dozen who joined the Reynolds speculations,
Rochesterians escaped the worst effects of the early years of the de
pression. However, as deflation and gloom persisted, many at first able
to back water were eventually drawn over the falls. The rapid succession
of two protracted periods of hard times helped to transform the fearless
"Young Lion of the West" of the twenties into the more cautious if
more stable city of the late forties.

The financial crisis of the early spring of 1837 found Rochester banks
in a fairly secure position. A state investigation failed to find any fault
in the management of the Bank of Rochester, and while the president
and cashier of the Bank of Monroe were reproved for purchasing paper
at a discount with funds borrowed from their bank, the institution itself
proved to be sound and well managed. 57 Early reports of bank dif
ficulties elsewhere were greeted as political grievances against Van
Buren s fiscal policies. Public meetings, assembled in Rochester to agitate
for the safety fund banking amendment then before the legislature,
voiced strong objections to the suggestion that stockholders be held to

58 Democrat, Feb. 12, Mar. 3, 1837.

M Reynolds Papers, 1834-1840, MSS, Roch. Hist. Soc.

55 Democrat, Apr. 3, May 20, 29, 1837.

56 Republican, May 2, 1837.

57 Extracts from the "Report of the Bank Investigating Committee," Democrat,
June 6, 1837.

214 THE WATER-POWER CITY

full liability. , M Local Whigs rivaled their fellows elsewhere in damning
the Specie Circular as the principal cause of the country s woes. 50

But, as word of failures in New Orleans, Buffalo, New York, and
London arrived in quick succession, it became evident that a disaster
of major proportions not simply a political crisis was in the offing. 60
Despite an attempt to exploit the crisis for political ends, a large public
meeting, convened by representative Democrats and Whigs acting
together, expressed nonpartisan concern that steps should be taken to
restore confidence in the currency composed chiefly of bank notes. 61
That the difficulty was not simply an evidence of divine wrath appeared
certain on the arrival of "astounding" news from New York of Arthur
Tappan s failure. 62 The legislature hastily concluded its long debate
over banking policy and passed the revised Safety Fund Banking Act. 63
A sense of relief developed when news arrived of a general suspension of
specie payments in New York and Buffalo. Rochester banks quickly fol
lowed suit, while the state legislature acted to remove the danger of a
loss of bank charters through such action. 64 Many a nervous chuckle
must have been heard in the crowded taverns of Rochester over the com
forting advice from New York that if the country really was bankrupt
it could take the benefit of the act and cheat John Bull out of "one
hundred million" and then set to work devising ways to go on again. 65

Unfortunately, the financial difficulties were not to be so easily recti
fied, while commercial stagnation soon loomed as a still greater evil. A
group of responsible merchants expressed confidence in the Rochester
banks, thus helping to allay fears of their collapse, but scant relief was
provided to those seeking currency or credit. 66 The sale of Genesee
Valley Canal stock attracted few buyers, bringing work on the project
to a temporary halt. 67 Forwarders began laying up their boats, boat
yards closed down, and orders for wheat were cancelled. 68 Edwin
Scrantom found plenty of time between customers at his recently opened
dry goods store to confide to his diary on May 16: "Difficulties thicken
and prospects darken. We anticipate new horrors." The next day
brought "Ditto, Ditto, Ditto" from the despondent storekeeper. The

58 Democrat, Mar. 2, 3, 7, 1837.

59 Democrat, Apr. 6. 1837.

60 Democrat, Mar. 27, Apr. 3, 1837; Chaddock, Safety Fund Banking System,
pp. 292-309.

61 Democrat, Apr. 26, 27, 28, 1837.

62 Edwin Scrantom, Diary, May 5, 1837, MS, Roch. Hist. Soc.
68 Democrat, May 6, 1837.

64 Democrat, May 9, 13, 1837; E. Scrantom, Diary, May 12, 13, 1837.

65 Democrat (Extra), May 12, 1837.

66 Democrat, May 15, 1837.

67 Democrat, May 15, 1837.

68 Democrat, May 4, 1837; Freeman Ckrke Letters (1837), MSS, in hands of
Mrs. Buell Mills of Rochester.

FLOUR CITY: PROSPERITY AND ADVERSITY 215

succeeding entry contained a bitter attack on Van Buren as the prin
cipal cause for the nation s misfortunes, but when a month passed
without a local failure, additional and less personal causes were sug
gested. Overspecuiation in Maine, Michigan, and other wild lands, in
shipping lines and similar ventures, was blamed, as well as the govern
ment, and the crop failure in the South appeared as a serious misfortune
for that area, though consolation was found for Rochester in the pros
pect of higher flour prices. 69

-<

Indeed, after the first period of uncertainty, prospects in Rochester
began to brighten. Flour prices in New York mounted sharply until they
exceeded ten dollars a barrel, returning handsome profits to local millers.
As the canal trade recovered from its summer slump, city flour shipments
that fall exceeded all previous figures. 70 The loss of a portion of the
Rochester product, when two huge storehouses in New York were broken
open and the barrels emptied into the streets by hungry flour rioters,
dealt a severe blow to a few millers, but the prospect of larger gains the
following* year diverted public attention. 71 Hervey Ely, owner of the
leading mill, declared "there is room for as much again more" milling
in Rochester. The failure of a large dry goods store, operated by two
"Scotch sharpers," afforded joy to Edwin Scrantom, while two other
failures, one a "theatregoer" and one a "cheat," brought little sorrow
to their competitor. 72 Despite the suspension of specie payments, eighty
Rochester firms agreed to accept local bank notes at par, and the
shortage in small notes was alleviated when the common council
issued $10,000 in small notes or shinplasters, 73 paid out for labor on the
streets by the heads of some three hundred needy families. 74 Construction
work on the Genesee Valley Canal and the two railroads eased the pres
sure of unemployment, though the steady stream of westward migrants
left no available job empty for long. 75 Mixed feelings greeted the
decline in trade union activity, while an unorganized strike of Genesee
Canal workmen against wages of 75 cents for labor from sun to sun
was quickly defeated. 76

69 E. Scrantom, Diary, May 2-June 2, 1837-

Roch. Republican, July i, Nov. 4, 1837. See the varied tables showing
fluctuations in commodity prices during these years, Walter B. Smith and A. H.
Cole, Fluctuations in American Business: 1790-1860 (Cambridge: Harvard Uni
versity Press, 1935), pp. 63-64, passim.

"O Reilly, Sketches of Rochester, p. *3&5.

^Elisabeth S. Spencer to Captain Eaton, Rochester, Dec. 8, 1837, E. S. S. Eaton
Letters; E. Scrantom, Diary, July 12, Oct. 24, 1837.

78 Democrat, May 15, 23, June 6, 1837.

74 Democrat, June 15, 20, 1837; see below, p. 244.

76 Genesee Farmer, VII, 118; Democrat, May 31, 1837.

76 Democrat, June 24, 28, July i, 4, 1837; Allan Gleason, "The History of
Labor in Rochester to 1884," p. 5, M. A. thesis, Univ. Roch.

216 THE WATER-POWER CITY

A series of unfortunate events added to Rochester s hardships that
year. When the Genesee jumped its banks in March and again in
October, inflicting considerable damage, the great flood of two years
before was recalled, depressing the spirits of those who had endeavored
to dismiss the constant flood danger as but a rare experience. 77 Among
several destructive fires, one leveled most of the stores in an entire block
and narrowly missed Scrantom s establishment, while another burned
out upwards of sixteen separate shops housed in the Globe Building. 78
The activity of a group of land sharpers, promoting a town site, named
Ontario, on the east bank of the river at its mouth, and selling lots with
water-power rights and other advantages sadly lacking on the marshy
plot, disappointed several Philadelphia buyers and gave Rochester a
bad name in the East. 79 Finally, the arrival of ninety destitute Norwegian
immigrants just before the canal closed that winter crowded the home
of Lars Larson and seriously taxed his ability to find shelter and jobs
for Ms countrymen, though several proved useful in the Larson boat
yard. 30

Rochester hastened to put the depression behind. Local merchants,
leading in the call for a bank convention in the fall of 1837, sent fre
quent petitions to Albany, demanding repeal of the law which au
thorized the suspension of specie. 81 Rochester banks were among the
first to resume payment in April, 1838.^ Action promptly followed,
seeking the extension of the Bank of Rochester charter and the establish
ment of new banks, but the legislature was absorbed in debate over the
free banking measure of 1838, which sought to break the monopoly
enjoyed by incorporated banks. 3 When finally adopted, that law, dis
carding many of the safety fund principles, prescribed simplified pro
cedures for the organization of new banks. 84 The Bank of Western
New York was promptly established in August with stock to the
amount of $295,000 subscribed, but the first large operation, in the
bonds of a Georgia lumber company, proved an unfortunate specula
tion, as events later disclosed. 85 Continued efforts to expand the city s
credit facilities led to the extension of the Bank of Rochester charter in

77 Genesee Farmer, V, 384; Democrat, Mar. 15, Oct. 23, 27, 1837.

78 E. Scrantom, Diary, June n, 1837; Republican, June 20, 1837.

79 Democrat, June 6, 1837; Peck Scrapbook, p. 3, Roch. Hist. Soc.
^Theodore C. Blegen, Norwegian Migration to America to 1860 (Northfield,

Minn., 1931), pp. 107-108, 203. Dean Blegen cites three letters written from
Rochester and other first-hand accounts of this migration.

^Assembly Journal (1838), pp. 126, 747; Republican, Nov. 21, Dec. 12, 1837.

82 Democrat, Apr. 10, 1838.

^Senate Doc. (1838), No. 44; Assembly Journal (1838), p. 360; RepubUcan,
Apr. 2, May 7, 1839.

84 Chaddock, Safety Fund Banking System, pp. 369-386.

85 Ely vs. Sprague et al., Clarke s Chancery Reports, I, 351-357; L. A. Ward
to Freeman Clarke, Rochester, Sept. 15, 1838, Clarke Letters.

FWUR CITY: PROSPERITY AND ADVERSITY 217

1839 and the establishment of three additional free banks in that and
the succeeding year: the Commercial Bank ? the Farmers 1 and Mechanics 5
Bank, and the Exchange Bank. 86

Unfortunately, Rochester s speedy revival In 1838 was premature.
When Scrantom and Ms partner, amazed at the profits shown by an in
ventory in March ? 1838, decided to tear down their old store and re
build a four-story exchange, the end of the year brought serious em
barrassment. Though Edwin gathered fifteen guests around his Thanks
giving table that November, and subscribed for $1000 of the new Com
mercial Bank s stock, the January inventory caused alarm. With affairs
in such an involved state that tie partners could not settle up, their
creditors proved reluctant to foreclose. The only alternative was to
carry on, prompting Edwin to borrow from his friend, Shakespeare, for
a diary entry: "That either makes us or foredooms us quite." The
partners gained a new appreciation of the treacherous character of the
circulating medium, which consisted of depreciated Michigan and
Canadian paper, worth possibly 25 per cent, Eastern bank notes of
varied merits, and the personal notes of their neighbors, hard either to
refuse or to redeem. The end of the year found "business dull, dull, dull, n
and Scrantom added, "Let the world wag." The partners secured another
extension of their loans but determined this time to add no additional
stock.* 7

Many were much less fortunate. The unusual prices received for flour
in 1837 started a boom in wheat, afflicting millers and forwarders who
bought at high prices with huge losses when flour tumbled from $11 to
$4.50 a barrel in little more than a year. Though the quantity of
flour reaching the Hudson over the Erie increased between 1837 and
1839, the value dropped from $8,456,082 to ^^S^QiP- 88 In &e face
of such rapid fluctuations it was not long before many of the leaders were
humbled. Jonathan Child, the first mayor, and Charles J. Hill, soon to
be elected to that office, both suffered huge losses in i839. 89 The number
of foreclosure proceedings begun in 1838 and 1839 totaled 311,** while
many of the less substantial simply became "runaways," possibly taking
a few hundred in cash secured from their latest creditors. 91

86 Hunt s Merchants 1 Magazine, IV (1841), 47M79-

87 E. Scrantom, Diary, Mar. 20, Apr. 14, May 19, Nov. 29, Dec. 8, 1838;
Jan. 4-12, 18, Nov. 18, 1839; Feb. 8, 18, 1840.

^Hunt s Merchants Magazine, XIII (1845), 290; XV (1846), 520; XVIII
(1848), 223.

**E. Scrantom, Diary, Nov. 18, Dec. 28, 1839; Elisabeth S. S. Eaton to her
husband, Rochester, Dec. 25, 1839, Feb. i, 1840, E. S. S. Eaton Letters, courtesy
of Mrs. Elizabeth Selden Rogers, New York City.

^Les Pendency Cases, Chancery Records, A & B, Monroe Co. Court House.

91 E. Scrantom, Diary, Nov. 18, Dec. 15, 1839; O Reilly Doc. No. 1778, Roch.
Hist. Soc.

2iS THE WATER-POWER CITY

Amidst the gloom of the early forties, the depression provided a dis
illusioning experience. Confidence In one s neighbors was shaken, and
"a scheming, gain-pursuing spirit" appeared. 92 It frequently occurred
that close associates did not hesitate to make sharp bargains at one
another s expense, as when Abraham Schermerhorn forced an early
foreclosure of the Eagle Tavern in 1839, acquiring that valuable site
and principal hotel for $700 above the mortgage of $50,000, although
another interested party, then absent from the city, offered $6,000
when asking for a resale. 98 One man s loss in such a situation provided
another s gain. Indeed it soon appeared to Edwin Scrantom that the
only prosperous business was that of auctioneer, selling out his neigh
bors 7 estates for a commission. 94

The successive months of 1841 were full of gloom in Rochester. A
blow-up occurred in the City Bank that summer, resulting In the ouster
of the president and cashier on charges of misuse of funds, while the
Bank of Western New York closed when its losses in Georgia lumber
were revealed. 95 The Commercial Bank, checked In its attempt to operate
on non-liquid assets, successfully held its head above water, 96 but the
Farmers and Mechanics Bank, with a capital of $100,000, of which
only one-quarter was paid in, succumbed early in i842. 97 Business
failures totaled more than $150,000 in I84I, 98 turning the public interest
from bank charters to bankruptcy legislation and proposals for a stable
currency."

Many other factors contributed to Rochester s hardships. From the
start of the crisis the citizens had turned to government both for aid to
the destitute and a reduction of taxes, though of course neither demand
was fully satisfied. Delay in the completion of transport improvements
joined with fire and flood losses to prolong the town s economic suffering.

Poor relief had been supplied by the townships prior to 1837 when
the council voted its first hundred dollars for a soup kitchen. The
extensive program of street paving, launched a few years before, was
continued with the hope that unemployment would be eased thereby.
Though seventy citizens petitioned that all public improvements in the

92 [J. B. Hudson], Narrative of the Christian Experience, p. 164.
^Gardiner vs. Schermerhorn et al., Clarke s Chancery Reports, I, 101-106.

94 E. Scrantom, Diary, July 20, iS^o-Aug. 13, 1844; ? Canfield, "Cash. Book,"
MS, Roch. Hist. Soc., records several foreclosure sales of ^842 and 1843.

95 E. Scrantom, Diary, June 13, i84i-Jan. 29, 1842; Democrat, Mar. 16, 17,
Apr. 8, 1841.

86 Ely vs. Sprague et aL, Clarke s Chancery Reports, I, 351-357.
97 E. Scrantom, Diary, Jan. 29, 1842; Hunt s Merchants Magazine, VI (-1842),
481.

"Democrat, Dec. 7, 1841.

"Democrat, Jan. 22, 1840; July 19, 1841.

FLOUR CITY: PROSPERITY AND ADVERSITY 219

city be suspended and the taxes reduced, an opposing memorial stressed
the commercial necessity for improving the main highways leading into
the city and urged the merits of a penal workhouse where young criminals
could be taught industry and led to reform. 100 After much hesitation the
council sold stock for an almshouse, spending the money on other im
provements, however. Some rock was broken for the streets, and the
steep hill at the east end of the main bridge was partially graded down.
Direct relief aided as many as 327 families, totaling 1,389 persons,
1,064 of them foreigners, in 1839-40, though the sums distributed
averaged barely five dollars a person for the entire year. 101

Increasingly insistent demands for public economy finally called a
halt to the mounting levies of the mid-thirties, but instead of cutting ex
penditures at the same rate, an ingenious plan was devised to pay for
the improvements with small notes or shinplasters to be redeemed from
the special assessments collected when the improvements were completed.
By the end of 1837 a total of $51,000 had been distributed in this fashion,
and while some notes were redeemed the next year, more were issued,
so that the close of 1840 found nearly $52,000 in shinplasters out
standing. 102 A determined effort to redeem these notes in the next two
years sharply contracted the circulating medium on which the trading
community depended, increasing the reliance on due bills issued by
private employers. Meanwhile, despite the economy pledges of its
officials and despite the publication in 1843 f a five-column list of
properties to be sold for delinquent taxes, the city still faced a floating
debt of approximately $40,000 in i844, 103

A similar struggle for economy developed in the legislature with more
disastrous effects on Rochester, which stood to benefit from the major
state outlays of the period. Indeed the work on the aqueduct and the
Genesee Valley Canal between 1837 and 1842 helped greatly to moderate
the local effects of the depression. Most Rochesterians favored an
energetic prosecution of these public works, 104 but eastern Democrats
urged retrenchment and sought to curb the powers of the Whig ad
ministration of Governor Seward to borrow for canal improvements.
Fortunately the new aqueduct had been completed before the economy
party gained ascendancy, stopping all further construction in March,
1842. Not only was the annual expenditure of several hundred thousand

100 Donald W. Gilbert, "Government and Finances of Rochester," MS, Univ,
Roch., pp. 67, 87-94; Common Council Proceedings, Apr. 17, 1838; Economy
Committee Report, MS, Roch. Hist. Soc.

101 Gilbert, "Government and Finances," pp. 90-94; see below, p. 255.

102 Democrat, May 15, 1837; Feb. 27, 1841; Gilbert, "Government and Finances,"
pp. I53-I55-

^Advertiser, Apr. 25, 1843; Democrat, Feb. 19, 29, 1844.
104 Senate Doc. (1838), No. i; O Reilly Doc., Case III, Box i; Hervey Ely to
Thurlow Weed, Rochester, Apr. i, 1841, Weed Letters.

220 THE WATER-POWER CITY

dollars in Rochester and the Genesee Country discontinued, but the
expected trade advantages were postponed. The severity of the recession
In Rochester during 1842 and 1843 no doubt reflected the drastic
economy efforts at Albany. 105

A series of natural events conspired to add to the city s misfortunes.
More than a score of destructive fires broke out in 1840 and again in
1842^ while the number doubled in 1843, when the activity of an in
cendiary was suspected. With a considerable portion of the milling and
other industrial equipment thus destroyed, residents began to question
the wisdom of economy in the fire department. 106 Meanwhile the long
series of bumper crops in the Genesee came to an end during the severe
drought of I84I/ 07 The snow storms of the next winter broke all previous
records for the depth of their drifts and the duration of bad weather,
but the following winter promptly established a new record, recalling
the snowbound winters of Vermont and enforcing long seasons of busi
ness stagnation. 108

Warm summer evenings had peculiar hazards of their own. The pro
tracted depression, with its reduced wages, prolonged working hours,
and renewal of the due-bill system, had revived labor agitation, and the
Court House Square afforded a convenient setting for these activities.
When the Mechanics Benevolent Association held a mass meeting
there in March, 1842, the Journeymen Cordwainers 7 Society cooperated
in the parade which followed, carrying posters roundly condemning
due biHs. 109 Though popular sympathy was aroused, the practice con
tinued, prompting a second mass meeting on the evening of June 14,
I843. 110 J* M. Schermerhorn, realtor, looking down from his comfortable
hotel suite across Buffalo Street, feared that the mob of two or three
thousand would get out of hand and start wrecking the town. The shout
of "fire, fire," coming through the open window as he sat writing to his
wife, added to his concern.

It was only a few months since Hervey Ely, the miller, had lost his
Greek Revival mansion on Livingston Park, and the homes of James K.
Livingston and Selah Mathews, two of Ely s endorsers, were likewise
sacrificed. Several other mansions changed hands that year, m but

105 Nelson J. Beach, Who Buttt the Canals? (Rome, 1852) ; Samuel B. Ruggles,
Vindication in 1849 of the Canal Policy of New York of 1838 (New York, 1849)
Hunt s Merchants Magazine, XIII (1845), 58-59 ; WMtford, History of the Canal
System, I, 167-172.

106 Newspaper Index, Roch. Pub. Library.

107 Rochester Evening Post, Sept. 4, 1841.
1<)S E. Scrantom, Diary, Mar. 15-29, 1843.

109 Advertiser, Mar. 22, 26, 1842.

110 Roch. Republican, June 20, 1843.

111 J. M. Schermerhorn to his wife, Rochester, Jan. 17, June 14, 1843, Schermer-
hora Letters, MSS in possession of Mrs. Rudolph Stanley-Brown, Washington,
D. C., photostat copies in Roch. Pub. Library.

FLOUR CITY; PROSPERITY AND ADVERSITY 221

Mrs. Ely was able to "appear happy" in less pretentious quarters in
MumforcPs Block, assisting her husband in the slow struggle to recoup
Ms fortune, while J. M. Schermerhorn, encouraged the next spring by
finding "business much improved/ 5 determined to build some more
cheap houses on the Reynolds tract (which had recently fallen to him
through Abelard s embarrassment) for quick sale to the newcomers
expected to arrive that summer. m

THE UPHILL ROAD TO RECOVERY: 1840-1850

As the depression was primarily a financial panic with far-reaching
commercial repercussions/ 13 Rochester with its fairly secure banks could
hope for recovery as soon as the commercial Hfe of the nation regained
its vitality. Persistent efforts to improve the local trade arteries achieved
some results, but it soon became evident that Rochester s future lay in
its industrial potentialities. 114 A concerted drive for their development
first appeared in the late forties.

Meanwhile, several of Rochester s ablest leaders sought the im
provement of transport facilities. Not only were such men as Henry
O Reilly an d Hervey Ely prominent in the fight for the canal s enlarge
ment, but Jonathan Child, James Seymour, and Abraham Schermerhora
invested heavily in railroad ventures, while Elisha Johnson, the engineer,
took an active part in several of these enterprises. After building the
Tonawanda and assisting in the formulation of plans for other railroads
in the area, Johnson became a construction engineer on the Genesee
Valley Canal, assuming the difficult task of extending that artery over
the highlands south of Mount Morris. Unfortunately, the major dif
ficulties encountered, together with the withdrawal of state support,
brought this latter project to a standstill, prompting Johnson, like many
of his fellow Rochesterians of the early forties, to seek a new fortune
in more distant ventures. 115

The Erie Canal, despite the disappointment of those who advocated
its early enlargement, was still Rochester s major trade artery. While
its commercial burden fluctuated from year to year, the upward trend
continued, particularly for eastbound produce, which increased twofold
during the forties. Cargoes hailing from the West increased rapidly and,
after 1846, greatly exceeded the state s produce in tonnage; ue western

112 Same to same, loc. cit., Nov. 7, 1843 ; May 14, 1844.

113 Reginald C. McGrane, The Panic of 1837 (Chicago, 1924) .

114 Michel Chevalier, Histoire et Description des Voles de Communication aux
Etats-Unis (Paris, 1840), pp. 13-14.

115 Democrat, Sept. 30, 1834; Rock. Republican, Jan. 24, Apr. 18, 1837;
Rochester Union and Advertiser, June 30, 1866.

116 Hunt s Merchants Magazine, IV (1841), 481-482; XXVII (1852), 1155
XXXV (1856), p. 359-

222 THE WATER-POWER CITY

wheat surpassed New York s in tonnage by i84i. UT These years also
witnessed a proportionate decrease in the number of packets and line
boats with facilities for carrying passengers, as compared with the
number of scows and other freight boats. From one-half, the former fell
to one-fifth of the total number of boats within ten years. 118 Boat cargoes
increased from an average of 41 tons in 1841 to 49 tons in 1844 and
to 76 by the mid-century, reflecting the shift to the heavier freight
boats. 119

Rochester continued to enjoy a large share of this trade. The com
pletion of the imposing new aqueduct at a cost of $445,347 in 1842
provided the city with a secure two-way crossing. 120 Fortunately the
deeper cut and improved locks at Lockport were likewise completed after
a short delay, facilitating a more adequate flow of Lake Erie water to
and beyond Rochester and postponing for a time the danger that
Genesee water would have to be diverted from the mills in order to
keep the canal supplied. 121 The prospect that the western end of the
canal would fall into disuse and that east- and westbound traffic would
be diverted by way of Lake Ontario and the Oswego Canal was thus
avoided, although the latter route s portion of the total trade did
increase. 122

Rochester successfully preserved its vital trade artery, but rapid shifts
marked the development of its trade. Local canal tolls, after hitting
an all-time high of $248,210 in 1840, fell off in succeeding years as toll
rates were reduced, while Buffalo s through shipments increased and her
tolls climbed rapidly until they more than doubled the Rochester receipts
after 1844^ Shipments by the canal fluctuated sharply in both size and
value. From the relatively high figures for 1837, when the 45,288 tons
shipped east reached a value of $3,518,335, the trade dropped irregularly
to 42,415 tons in 1844, valued at only $2,024,449 largely because of
the sharply reduced flour prices. Buffalo s trade experienced a twofold
growth during the same period and continued to increase its lead over
Rochester, while Oswego bounded past, but shipping figures at these
rival ports represented transshipments, whereas those of Rochester
measured the output of the mills and in the late forties the augmented
factory product as well. Thus, while ashes fell to a fifth of their 1837
value by the mid-century, and flour barely held its own, Rochester s

Hunt s Merchants Magazine, XXVIII (1853), 481.

^ Hunt s Merchants? Magazine, XI (1844), I 4 2 - The total number of canal
boats in the state in 1844 was given as 2,126, with 40 per cent of them classified
as undecked scows and the total valuation placed at $1,526,000,

m Hunt s Merchants Magazine, XXVII, 115.

:m Whitford, History of the Canal System, 171, 960; Democrat, Apr. 5, 21, 1842.

121 Whitford, History of the Canal System, p. 960.

122 Whitford, History of the Canal System, p. 1062.

123 Whitford, History of the Canal System, pp. 910, 1062, 1064; Senate Doc.
(1845), No. 115, Stint, i; Hunt s Merchants Magazine, XLII (1860), 118.

FLOUR CITY: PROSPERITY AND ADVERSITY 223

total advanced 30 per cent. After 1844 flour dropped from two-thirds to
one-half of the total valuation. 324 But a still more noticeable shift oc
curred in the relation between shipments and landings, for by 1848 the
latter showed an excess value of $600,000, doubtless reflecting a gain
in the city s merchandising activities in the interior. 125

A contributing factor in Rochester s fluctuating canal trade was the
sudden rise and fall in lake shipments. These reached a total of $654,700
in 1 84 i, 12S when the European demand for breadstuff s revived the
Genesee s languishing exports, but dropped to a third of that figure by
I847- 127 The trade would increase, many argued, as soon as the abandoned
Carthage railroad was replaced by a west-side steam line to the Charlotte
docks, but construction was delayed for several years. 128 Occasional
appeals for reciprocal trade with Canada ran counter to the more per
sistent desire for protective tariffs. 129 The arrival and departure of two
steamers (and frequently an equal number of schooners) each weekday
during the busy season in 1842 provided a lively activity 1SO which con
tinued, from year to year, though the Genesee stop became relatively
unimportant as the trade of Oswego and Sacketts Harbor, not to
mention Buffalo and other western ports, greatly outstripped that of
Rochester. 131

The large commercial advantages expected from the Genesee Valley
Canal never materialized, though traffic over this route did get under
way when the first stretch of the canal opened to Mount Morris in
September, 1840. Only fifty-two miles were completed when the
Stop Law postponed further construction. 132 The canal, as it stood,
served little more than the normal valley settlements which had formerly
boated the river free of charge, but the expenditure of upwards of
$1,500,000 in the valley had greatly stimulated enterprise. The tonnage
on the Genesee Canal increased from 26,892 in 1841 to 65,077 in 1844
and 89,804 in 1850, while the tolls mounted over the same period from
$9,927 to $19,641 and $27,675. 133 This trade averaged far below its an
ticipated volume, however, and although work resumed on the upper
section in 1847, after a stoppage of five years, the prospect of reaching

124 Senate Doc. (1838), No. 35, Stmt. 8; (1845), No. 115, Table 3; Assembly
Doc. (1850), No. 140, Stmt. 3.

125 Raymond Scrapbook, p. 98.

126 Democrat , Dec. 4, 1841.

127 Hunt s Merchants Magazine, XVIII (1848), 491-492.

:L28 Democrat, Apr. 28, Dec. 4, 1841; Jan. 10, July 6, 1842; Advertiser, Jan. 18,

1843-

129 Republican, May 17, 1842; Mar. 19, 26, July 2, 1844; Democrat, Oct. 25,
1849; Raymond Scrapbook, p. 27.

13G Democrat, July 6, 1842; Advertiser, July 13, 1843.

^Hunt s Merchants Magazine, XVIII (1848), 491-492; XXIV (1851), 217;
J. L. Barton, Commerce of the Lakes (Buffalo, 1847).

^Advertiser, July 23, 1840; Hunt s Merchants 1 Magazine, XIII (1845), 58-59.

1S3 Whitford, History of the Canal System, pp. 1062, 1066.

224 THE WATER-POWER CITY

the coal fields and tapping the trade of the Ohio Valley appeared far in

the future.

Rochester s two main railroads proved less disappointing, chiefly
because less was expected of them. The single-track Tonawanda line
had been constructed with such economy that it soon closed for repairs.
Though the road s receipts in 1839 totaled $50,210, the major portion
came from passengers, who increased markedly in 1843 when completion
of the Attica and Buffalo Railway made the Tonawanda attractive to
through travelers, sustaining a schedule of two trains daily. 134 Un
fortunately the Buffalo line drained off much of Genesee County s
produce, previously carried by the Tonawanda to Rochester, and no
effective competition for the canal s freight developed for many
years. 135

Meanwhile, work on the Auburn line progressed rapidly. With a
depot erected on Mill Street and a bridge thrown across the Genesee
in 1839, the company was able with the aid of a state grant to reach
Canandaigua in 1840 and Auburn the following year. 136 New England
capital eagerly absorbed the forfeited local stock 13T when the cost of the
full 78 miles mounted to $1,727,000, or $22,141 per mile, more than
double that of the Tonawanda but slightly under the average for New
York railroads of the day. 138 Again, the passenger service attracted
chief attention, 90 per cent of the revenue of 1843-44 coming from that
source. 139 Indeed the merchants of Canandaigua found it necessary to
convene a public meeting and circulate petitions in order to persuade the
Auburn and Rochester to run one freight train a week in i84i. 140

The two Rochester lines became useful links in the chain of railroads
stretching across the state in these years. With the Auburn line finished,
rail connections extended over these several lines from Albany to
Rochester and on to Batavia, and to Buffalo by January, 1843. Barring
accidents, it was theoretically possible to reach New York in a day and
a night from Rochester by rail and Hudson River steamer, a trip pre
viously made with good luck in a week. 141

"^Advertiser, Feb. 21, Apr. 28, 1840; Democrat, May 7, 1841; Apr. 27, July i,
1842; Jan. 17, 1843; Hunt s Merchants 1 Magazine, IX (1843), 482.

136 Hunt s Merchants Magazine, IX (1843), 482.

^Roch. Republican, May 14, July 16, Aug. 13, 1839; Democrat, Aug. 3, 28,
1839; Advertiser, Apr. 13, 30, June 15, Sept. ri, 1840, Nov. 4, 1841; Hungerford,
Men and Iron, pp. 48-55.

^Democrat, Dec. i, 1848.

138 Hunt s Merchants Magazine, X (1844), 476-477.

189 Hunt s Merchants Magazine, XII (1845), 382.

140 Democrat, Nov. 19, Dec. 4, 1841; Albert Lester to Henry O Reilly,
Canandaigua, Dec. i, 1841, O Reilly Doc., No. 1260.

141 Abelard Reynolds to Fabritus Reynolds, Rochester, Sept. 10, 1841, Reynolds
Papers.

FLOUR CITY: PROSPERITY AND ADVERSITY 225

However, the various companies, supported in considerable measure
by local capital, felt little disposed to facilitate such rapid travel.
Hotelkeepers and merchants at Utica ? Syracuse^ and especially at
Rochester desired schedules that would assure them an ample overnight
clientele. Their injury would have been great indeed, had the speeding
cars deprived them at one blow of the 50,000 through passengers a year
which the stage lines had previously scattered along the route. 142 Yet
the definite advantages to be gained through a mutual use of rolling
stock prompted the Auburn and Rochester to make such an agreement
with the Auburn and Syracuse in 1842. Two years later a more ex
tensive pooling of the freight, passenger, mail, and "emigrant" cars
was achieved by the five adjoining lines running between Rochester
and Albany. 143 The latter year likewise saw the Tonawanda tracks ex
tended despite many protests into the Mill Street station. An able en
gineer, Charles B. Stuart, undertook the reconstruction of this line in
1844, enabling it to carry the heavier cars and engines of the Eastern
roads, 144

While these several railroads as yet shared little of the area s heavy
commerce, they exerted a considerable influence upon its economic life.
Unprecedented opportunities for the profitable investment of private
funds, far beyond the resources of the area, attracted new capital from
the East, greatly stimulating the demand for labor and supplies. A new
land use appeared, and the Auburn and Rochester paid out $170,028 for
its narrow right of way between 1837 and i842. 145 When car and ma
chine shops were demanded, Rochester hastened to supply them. 146

The old stage companies, hard pressed, quickly abandoned the cross-
state business. Their last-ditch fight to retain the mail contracts ended
when the railroads provided cars in which the mail could be sorted en
route. 147 Rochester, however, still enjoyed the services of six stage

Merchants Magazine, X (1843), 476-477, XII (1845), 382.

143 "Articles of Agreement between the Auburn and Rochester Railway and the
Auburn and Syracuse Railway respecting the joint use of certain properties,
April 19, 1842"; "Articles of Agreement between the Auburn and Rochester, the
Auburn and Syracuse, the Syracuse and Utica, the Utica and Schenectady, and
the Mohawk and Hudson Railway companies for the joint use of freight, passenger,
mail and emigrant cars, 1844," MSS, Roch. Hist. Soc.

^Democrat, Feb. i, 5, Apr. 30, Nov. 18, 1844,- Charles B. Stuart, "Report on
the Tonawanda Rail Road, Sept. 27, 1843," Stuart s Railroad Reports (New York,
1852).

145 "Statement of Disbursements of the Auburn and Rochester Railway to
Jan. i, 1842," MS, Roch. Hist. Soc.; Hunt s Merchants Magazine, XI (1844),
76-77, 172 ; Democrat, May 7, -1841. The early railroad dividends were usually 7
per cent per annum.

^Hunt s Merchants Magazine, XII (1845), 382.

147 Henry B. Gibson to Henry O Reilly, Canandaigua, Apr. 21, 1841, O Reilly
Doc., No. 856,

226 THE WATER-POWER CITY

companies in 1844 14S as Improved stage lines were extended north and
south. The decrease in packet service on the canals closely reflected rail
road competition, though the immigrant traffic was only partly lost.
With the provision of more comfortable cars and coaches fitted with
sleeping accommodation, the total number of travelers increased two
fold during the forties. 149 Fares received from the more than 150,000
passengers who passed through Rochester in 1849 provided handsome
returns, enabling local railroads to pay dividends of 7 or 8 per cent
annually. 150

Nevertheless, the railroads appeared as modest enterprises when com
pared with the canal. The regular payroll of the Auburn and Rochester
included thirteen names aside from the president in 1840, requiring a
monthly outlay of but $475. By 1844 the number of employees had in
creased to 137, reaching 287 by 1848, while the Tonawanda averaged
84 and 93 in the same years, not including construction labor. 151
These workmen, scattered in the various towns from Auburn to Batavia,
operated a total of 25 locomotives and 150 freight and passenger cars
in 1848 a small labor force indeed compared with the canallers who
manned the 4,ooo-odd boats which made 7,262 visits to Rochester that
year. 152 Scarcely 4,500 tons of freight were carried out of the city by
railroad in 1.846, when the canal boats loaded 100,803 tons. 153 The
average canal season lasted only 225 days during these years, but the
pioneer railroads likewise closed down for weeks at a time, notably dur
ing the heavy snows of 1842 and 1843, and for extensive repairs each
spring. 154 Their prosperous months proved to be April through October
when four-fifths of the receipts were gathered. 155

Constant efforts to strengthen these early railroads somewhat im
proved their commercial facilities. Though the Tonawanda road bed was

148 [Humphrey Phelps?], Phelp s Travelers Guide through the United States
(New York, 1848), .pp. 23-26.

14S Ole Munch Raeder, America in the Forties. The Letters of Ole Munch Raeder,
tr. and ed. by Gunnar J. Malmin (Minn., 1929), pp. 1-95 Hunt s Merchants
Magazine, XXH (1850), 567.

150 Hunt s Merchants Magazine, XX (1849), 550; XXII (1850), 567; Democrat,
Apr. 12, Sept. 4, Oct. 13, 1848.

151 "List of Persons necessary to operate the Auburn and Rochester Railway
between Rochester and Canandaigua and their Salaries" [1840], MS, Roch. Hist.
Soc.; Hunt s Merchants Magazine, XII (1845), 382; XX (1849), 550.

^Hunt s Merchants 3 Magazine, XX (1849), 550; Whitfield, History of the
Canal System, p. 961; "Weighlock Report," Raymond Scrapbook, p. 199. Yet
the steady employment at $1.25 a day enjoyed in the car repair shop, and espe
cially the regularity of the payments, coming on the first day of every month
without fail, impressed Charles Howland, a recent migrant from New England;
see his letter, quoted in R. H. S., Pub., XXI, 84-85.

153 Senate Doc. (1847), No. 90, Stmt. 2.

154 E. Scrantom, IMary, Mar. 23, 1843.

155 Hunt s Merchants Magazine, XX (1849), 222.

FLOUR CITY: PROSPERITY AND ADVERSITY 227

rebuilt in tie mid-forties, before the end of the decade its managers de
termined to replace the old strip-iron rails with the new T-rail already
installed on the Auburn line at a cost of $10,000 a mile and financed
in part by a state loan of $4oo,ooo. 156 The ten-mile*an-hour average
speed, with an occasional spurt that reached fifteen, astonished local
travelers of the early forties, but by the mid-century Rochesterians had
become accustomed to speeds of from twenty to twenty-five miles an
hour. 157 Freight engines hauling twenty-five cars occasionally pulled out
of the city. 15 Though fatal accidents proved frequent (trains jumped
the tracks in the area at least twenty-one times during the forties), 159 the
more normal mishap resulted from the blazing sparks scattered by the
engines, which consumed some 23,000 cords of wood a year. 160 When
complaints against the service increased, a local railroad guide advised
travelers to "avoid all words of controversy with the Railroad Men, and
do not give them any unnecessary trouble. Their duties are many times
arduous and vexatious, and you may often find them out of humor.
Should they misuse you, report them at the end of their Road." 161
Unfortunately there was no authority to appeal to when porters from
rival hotels started fighting over a passenger s baggage at the depot
on Mill Street. Harriet Beecher Stowe marveled in 1842 that passengers
were not crushed daily in the crowds swarming around the cars with the
engines puffing steam and sparks up under the high roof. 162

Several other railroad projects interested the Flour City during the
forties. A proposed direct line to Syracuse, feared by the canal interests
and the Auburn line, failed to gain legislative approval until iSso. 163
Though a charter was secured for a railroad to Lockport, rivalry be
tween the canal and Ridge Road routes delayed its construction until

Still another railroad, the New York and Erie, was destined to have a
considerable effect on Rochester s commercial position. Financial dif
ficulties halted construction in 1842, but a few years later, when its

^Democrat, Aug. u, Oct. 3, 6, Nov. 27, 1848; Raymond Scrapbook, p. 91;
Hunt s Merchants Magazine, XXI (1849), 167.

* 57 Hunt s Merchants Magazine,. XXII, 568; Seymour Dunbar, A History of
Travel in America (Indianapolis, 191$) HI, 1051, 1054.

158 Advertiser, Apr. 28, 1848.

159 The Newspaper Index lists 32 fatalities during the forties and many less
serious injuries.

160 Raymond Scrapbook, p. 69; Democrat, July 7, 8, 1842; Jan. 17, Sept. 6,
1843.

161 Advertiser, Dec. 2, 1848; Dewey s Albany and Buffalo Railway Handbook
(Rochester, 1849).

^Genesee Olio, Nov. 4, 1848; Harriet Beecher Stowe, Life and Letters of
Harriet Beecher Stowe (Boston, 1897), PP- 107-108.

1GB Hunt s Merchants Magazine, XXI (1849), 163-171.
164 Freeman Clarke Letters.

228 THE WATER-POWER CITY

advance through the southern portion of the Flour City ? s hinterland
recommenced; plans were laid to construct a line southward along the
river with the hope of persuading the Erie to run its main line into
Rochester. While the Avon line failed to achieve that purpose, the Erie
completed its 445-mile line in 1851, the longest yet built in America,
providing a southern connection between New York City and Lake
Erie. 165 Nevertheless, despite the Erie s success in tapping a coal field
and opening a vast area, the real commercial achievements of this and
other railroads still lay in the future. Travelers from abroad were chiefly
surprised at the flimsy construction of these New York railroads as
compared with those of England and the continent. 165

-<

Rochester s failure to achieve major improvements in its commercial
facilities proved a severe handicap in the race with more advantageously
located cities. The new railroads, however, strengthened its position of
leadership in the northern portion of the Genesee Country, and while
many of its citizens, discouraged by the protracted hardships of the
depression, moved on, a sufficient number of newcomers arrived to give
Rochester a 92 per cent growth in the ten years following its incorpora
tion and an So per cent growth during the forties. The most rapid in
crease came in the years prior to the depression, yet nearly one thousand
arrived during each of the seven lean years, and growth was slightly
accelerated in the late forties. 167

Nevertheless, it seemed clear to a hasty observer in 1843, J. W. Scott,
Hunt s authority on urban growth, that Rochester s palmy days had
passed. 168 Smaller cities further west, such as Cleveland, Detroit,
Milwaukee, and Chicago, were experiencing Rochester s earlier boom
days, and many of the latter s residents felt attracted by the expansive
atmosphere tiiey had known so well. Western cities of Rochester s class
Buffalo, Pittsburgh, and Louisville and the two leaders,. Cincinnati
and St. Louis, recovering quickly from the sharp hardships of 1837,
bounded far ahead, supported by the commercial opportunities at their
respective docks. 169 Even Oswego appeared to Scott as destined to out
class Rochester, while Maumee (or Toledo) seemed to hold the
greatest promise, with Chicago alone offering a challenge. 170 Rochester-

165 C. R. Babbit to Henry O Reilly, Painted Post, Aug. 16, 1841, O Reilly Doc.,
No. 1729; Hunt s Merchants Magazine, X (1844), 562-563; E. H. Mott, The
Story of Erie (New York, 1908), pp. 94-109, 483.

WQ Genesee Farmer, IX (1839), 322; Letter of German Immigrant (1848),
Wisconsin Magazine of History, Sept., T937, pp. 72-73.

ie7 Democrat, Aug. 20, 1835 ; July 31, 1840 ; Nov. i, 1850 ; Advertiser, Sept. 6, 1845.

388 J, W. Scott, "Internal Trade of the United States," Hunt s Merchants
Magazine, IX (1843), 31-47- See also Raymond Scrapbook, p. 134.

169 U. S. Census (1840), (1850).

170 Scott, "Internal Trade," pp. 39-46. Other forecasts saw Cincinnati and

FLOUR CITY: PROSPERITY AND ADVERSITY 229

lans reluctantly gave up their proud title, "The Young Lion of the
West." Elisha Johnson, Henry O Reilly, and James Seymour were but
a few of the more prominent citizens drawn away by the prospects of
one or another of Rochester s rivals. 171

That a surprising number of the city s residents moved on Is revealed
by a comparison of successive directory lists. A sampling of 400 names
In the 1838 directory, only 166 of which reappeared In the list of 1844,
suggests that approximately 60 per cent had left, so that barely a
third of the more numerous adult male citizens of 1844 could boast five
years residence within the city. Again, only 221 of a sampling of 500
names in the 1844 directory reappeared in the 1849 listing, indicating
that approximately 55 per cent departed during the more favorable
years of the late forties. Though the turnover may not have been so
rapid as that of a decade before^ the actual number of migrants was
much larger. 172

Fortunately for the city s future the stream of newcomers more than
filled all vacancies. A few were still arriving from New England, but
Germany was almost as well represented^ while Great Britain and her
possessions (especially Ireland) accounted for more than a fifth of the
population. Though the foreign-born comprised nearly a third of the
city s population in 1845, the majority were of New York State origin,
hailing generally from the older communities of western New York. 173
The enterprise of the Genesee was centering more definitely at Rochester.
Monroe County as a whole continued Its steady growth, greatly exceeding
its near neighbors, yet the city, increasing more rapidly, comprised
more than a third of the county s population by i845. 174

While Rochester s growth did not offer the encouragement to specula-

St. Louis as the giants of the future, outranking even New York within another
half -century. Hunt s Merchants Magazine, XIX (1848), 383-386.

^EvnVs Merchants Magazine, XVH (1855), 46-52; Edwin Scrantom, "Old
Citizen s Letters," p, 15, Scrapbook, Roch. Hist. Soc.j Advertiser, Dec. 14, 1840,
May 18, 1847. See also L. B. Swan, Journal of a Trip to Michigan in 1841
(Rochester, 1904), in which visits to former Rochesterians are recounted.

172 Rochester Directory (1838), (1844), (1849-50). Approximately 70 per
cent departed in the n-year period after 1838 as compared with approximately
80 per cent in the previous n years, judging from the directory comparisons made
by Miss Dorothy S. Truesdale. Occasional letters to the folks at home or to
former friends in Rochester and frequent marriage and death notices in local
papers indicate that at least those whose Rochester ties were to this extent main
tained had been attracted by Western urban sites and commercial prospects rather
than by the cheap farm lands of the interior. Genesee Farmer, VII ( 1837), n8j
E. B. Elwood to Henry O Reilly, Toledo, Ohio, Dec. 8, 1842, O Reilly Doc., No.
1672 ; Newspaper Index.

173 New York State Census (1845).

174 New York State Census (1845); Andrews Scrapbook, B, p. 86, Roch. Hist
Soc.

230 THE WATER-POWER CITY

tors afforded by many Western towns, it proved sufficient to justify
Investments. Many inflated property values had to be scaled
down, but if the titles had been acquired in the early thirties the losses
were only fictitious in character. Thus a i69-acre farm on the north
western edge of the city sold in the realtor s darkest year, 1841, for
three times its purchase price of i83o. 175 Edwin Scrantom knocked down
numerous properties at lively auction sales in the Arcade Hall during
these years. On one occasion seven town lots netted a total of $5191,
while in 1844^ when values were beginning to rise, a commercial lot on
Buffalo Street brought $500 a front foot. 178

J. M. Schermerhorn, among others, found that only by improving
Ms properties could their values be maintained. "Rents are exceedingly
low," he informed his wife, "for dwelling houses especially but I must
submit to the times." 1T7 Many residents held a different view of the situa
tion. A series of ten articles, signed by "FrankHn" in the Workingman s
Advocate in 1840, attacked the rentals demanded for small stores and
cheap houses. Tenements and houses that did not cost $1000 demanded
$150 in annual rents, he declared, while mansions valued at $5000
could be rented for ?SOQ, and the only remedy for the poor was to move
out to the country. 178 A large body of citizens gathered in public protest
two years later, and though the demand for additional houses remained
brisk, rents did come down 20 to 30 per cent 179 Some 265 new houses,
two-thirds of them of wood, were erected in Monroe County, the great
majority in the city, during 1840, but they averaged less than $1500
apiece. 180 Yet one Greek Revival mansion commanded as much as $7000
when sold at forced sale, 181 while visitors remarked at the spacious dwell
ings of numerous Rochesterians. 182

As the city continued its encroachments on the surrounding farms,
an additional 304 acres was brought within the limits, chiefly in the
annexation of grounds for a new cemetery on the southern border of
the city. 183 Yet ample room for growth still existed within the corporate

175 Otis Farm folder, MS, Roch. Hist. Soc.; see Smith and Cole, Fluctuations
in American Business, pp. 53-58.

176 Rochester Daily Sun, July 4, 1839; Democrat, July 2, 1842; Apr. i, 1843;
Aug. i, 1844; Advertiser, Mar. i, 1844.

177 J. M. Sdhermerhorn to his wife, Rochester, Mar. 29, 1843, Schermerhorn
Letters.

178 Workingman s Advocate, Feb. 11-28, 1840.

179 Democrat, Apr. n, 1842; J. M. Schermerhorn to his wife, Rochester, Mar.
14, 1843, Schermerhorn Letters.

180 U. S. Census (1840), p. 129.

181 J. M. Schermerhorn to his wife, Rochester, Jan. 17, 1843, Schermerhorn
Letters.

182 Sir Charles LyeH, Travels in North America in the Years 1841-42 (London,
1845), I, 17; see below, pp. 299-300.

183 W. Earl Weller, "The Expanding Boundaries of Rochester," R. H. S., Pub.,
XIV, 178, 181.

FLOUR CITY: PROSPERITY AND ADVERSITY 231

bounds. Thus a total of 17,658 bushels of potatoes grew on 250 city
acres, and 4,884 bushels of corn on another 166 acres in 1844, when the
city numbered 1,503 milk cows and 2,627 hogs. Few cows or truck
gardens appeared within the four central wards, but the 154 farmers
resident in the city cultivated broad fields in the outlying wards and
adjoining towns. Their milk, butter, cheese, and vegetables made a
sizable contribution to the local produce market 184

The fundamental city pattern was already taking shape. 185 Not only
were the major roads that had converged on the bridge in the earlier
days now fully developed and most of the cross streets within the
radius of one mile clearly laid out, but settlement was pressing outward
along each of the chief highways. The improvement of five of these
arteries by plank road companies after 1848 accelerated the outward ex
tension of residential areas, which were served in a measure by two
competing omnibus lines in the late forties. 186 The river still provided
the major dividing line, though four bridges as well as the aqueduct
and railroad bridge facilitated communication, enabling the population
on the east side almost to match that on the west bank by iSso. 187 The
Erie and the Genesee Valley canals likewise segregated various portions
of the city, while the railroad promised to have a similar effect.

<

The forties also witnessed the further development of Rochester s
industrial pattern. Forced to admit that "in every kind of business save
manufacturing it [Buffalo] far surpasses Rochester," "* the water-power
city s potentialities as a manufacturing center were increasingly stressed.
Milling still dominated the scene, for new leadership as well as new
markets and raw materials were needed before flour s preeminence
could be challenged, but these requirements began to appear by the
mid-century.

The suspicion that the Rochester flour industry had reached its maxi
mum girth was gaining weight. 18 The grain fields of the West over
shadowed those of the Genesee, and while enough wheat arrived to
enable Rochester to grind and ship 35,194 tons of flour by canal in 1844,
the same year saw 91,927 tons of flour from western mills loaded on
canal boats at Buffalo. 190 Rochester s 4oo,ooo-barrel shipment by canal
that season increased nearly 50 per cent the next year, despite a .decline

184 N. Y. State Census (1845).

185 City Map of 1845-46.

^Advertiser, July 9, 1842; May 9, 10, 1848; Democrat, July 7, 1848; Dec. 6,
1850; Freeman Clarke, Day Book, MS.

i* 7 Hunt s Merchants Magazine, XXV (1851), 136; Sun, June, n, 1839.

188 Elisabeth S. Spencer to E. S. S. Eaton, Rochester, Oct. 6, 1845, E. S. S. Eaton
Letters.

189 Rural New Yorker, Aug. 29, 1850.

190 Senate Doc. (1845), No. 115, Stmt 2; Advertiser, Nov. 28, 1844.

232 THE WATER-POWER CITY

in the number of mills, yet the profits failed to show a proportionate
gain since the price had tumbled to barely four dollars a barrel. 181 Prices
mounted during the next two years, because of crop failures in Europe ?
boosting Rochester s canal shipments to 631,574 barrels, while the total
product of local mills approached 700,000 barrels. But other milling
centers likewise benefited. Baltimore and Oswego each handled more
flour than Rochester although they did not mill it all and new flour
producers in the West were greatly stimulated. 192

The chief drawbacks to flour milling were the rapid price fluctuations
and the large investments tied up annually with little better than a
gambler s chance of a fair return. The hazards of the situation increased
when grain was bought at a distance, forcing the miller to rids: his
funds during the slow shipment to Rochester as weH as during the
period required for the delivery of flour to market. The late forties saw
Rochester millers relying more largely than for several years on Genesee
wheat. Fortunately, the output of Monroe and Livingston Counties
stood second and third in the nation, sufficient to keep the mills fairly
busy, had Rochester been able to secure the whole of it; 19S however,
competing millers up the valley again enjoyed a thriving business, now
that the Genesee Canal provided a means for export. When in 1844 the
cost of the raw material was taken out, the receipts from Rochester flour
totalled but $108,444, which had to be divided between the owners and
employees of eighteen mills. 194 It was not surprising that a rapid turn
over should occur. Only two millers of 1834, Allcott and Ely, remained
actively engaged in the business a decade later. 195

Despite the greater respectability which milling retained, numerous
able young men, such as Lewis Selye and Seth C. Jones, gave their at
tention to the various foundries and machine shops. As the iron de
mands of the railroads and other enterprises increased, the value of
these products surpassed that of lumber and other forest articles. Eleven
iron foundries, employing from five to forty-five men each, turned out
products weighing 2,890 tons in 1846. Machine shops, connected with
several of these foundries, employed 759 men in 1848, valuing their
product at $748,ooo. 196 Edge tools, household fixtures, stoves, steam

m Advertiser, Nov. 28, 1844; Nov. 24, 1845; Hunt s Merchants Magazine,
XIII (1845), 290, XV (1846), 520.

^Hunt s Merchants Magazine, XVIII (1848), 306-307; XXII (1850), 204,
328; XXm (1850), 51:; Democrat, Dec. 14, 1848.

193 Hunt s Merchants Magazine, XXV, 87; U. S. Census (1850) ; Percy W. Bid-
weD and John L Falconer, History of Agriculture in the Northern United States:
1620-1860 (2nd ed.; New York, 1941), pp. 237-240.

m N. Y. State Census (1845); Roch. Republican, July 20, 1847.

195 Directory (1834), (1844).

W6 Hunt s Merchants Magazine, XVII (1847), 46-52; Raymond Scrapbook,
pp. 88, 197, 200; New Genesee Farmer, IV (1843), 32; The Western Almanac
(1846), adv. on back cover.

234 THE WATER-POWER CITY

Much criticism centered upon the city s undeveloped power re
sources. It could not be denied that the twenty-odd mills and the
numerous other establishments making use of the Genesee s power
scarcely tapped a fraction of Its energy. Though a few of the mills at
the main falls, installing the recently invented turbines in the place of
older water wheels, reached down over the edge of the gorge to gain
the benelt of a ten- or twenty-foot water head, the rest of the power
of the ninety-six-foot cataract remained undeveloped, while the large
resources at the lower falls were almost entirely neglected. 203 A survey
in 1845 found scarcely a thousand men employed in the various mills
and factories operated by water power, with only one-sixth of the city s
potential power developed a sharp contrast to the situation at Lowell,
Utica, and other less favored fall towns. 204

The agitation for industrial expansion achieved some results. While
the thriving sheep herds up the valley possibly accounted for the sk
small woolen factories of the mid-forties, 205 Lowell s cotton factories,
current ^rmbols of industrial enterprise, focused greater interest on the
effort to establish a new cotton factory at the brink of the main falls.
Seth C. Jones, who had grown up with the city, joined forces with a
merchant-weaver from the East, enabling the Jones Mill, with 150
workers, to overshadow the smaller Genesee Cotton Mill, a survival
from the previous decade. Together they turned out some six thousand
yards of cotton cloth a day, importing their raw material by canal
from New York. Not only was the local market supplied, but cotton
goods found a modest place in the city s exports. 206 It was not without
significance that the first record of a factory whistle in Rochester was
the provision of a bell on the top of the Jones cotton mill. 201

A considerable revival occurred among local boatbuilders as the repu
tation of Rochester boats spread along Western canals. With the output
of 56 boats in 1845 increasing to more than 100 the next year and to
233 and 221 in the two succeeding years, the valuation averaged around
$1500 a boat, affording employment to 450 men. The enlargement of the
canal east of Syracuse and the failure to complete the work from that
point to Rochester prompted the removal of several boatyards to Syra
cuse for the construction of large line boats, but the remaining companies
continued to supply one of Rochester s major industries. 208

A number of special articles were produced in expanding local fac-

208 Democrat, Feb. 8, 1844; Aug. 22, 23, Sept. 6, 1845.

^Democrat, Sept. 22, 1845.

^Hunt s Merchants Magazine, XVII (1847), 50-52.

206 Republican, Nov. 24, 1846; Democrat, Feb. 22, 1848; Raymond Scrapbook,
pp. 42, 88, 198; Assembly Doc. (1850).

207 Democrat, Oct. 21, 1848.

208 Daniel W. Brown to Charles Perkins, Rochester, Feb. 27, 1847, Perkins
Papers, MSS, R. P. L.; Raymond Scrapbook, pp. 25, 65, 87, 258.

FLOUR CITY: PROSPERITY AND ADVERSITY 235

tories. After the burning of Ms first carriage works, James Cunningham
erected a large factory in 1848, soon extending Ms sales into the West. 209
The Rochester Scale Works turned out many useful articles, some of
them of local invention, wMIe water and suction pumps were manu
factured in the city. 210 Water-driven machinery found its way into other
shops, notably the several large printing establishments. 211

Unfortunately the campaign for an industrial city was hampered by a
growing fear lest the water power of the Genesee be diverted. The canal
improvements at Lockport had facilitated an increased passage of Lake
Erie water through the gap, but sedimentation on the long level stretch
east of that point checked the flow before it reached Rochester. In 1845
and 1846 local millers became alarmed when the river below the canal
feeder began to run dry. The demand of the Genesee Valley Canal upon
the river s resources promised to aggravate the situation. 212

Numerous petitions were sent to Albany requesting relief. Hervey Ely
and Jacob Graves, both good Whigs, took the lead in protest against the
results of Democratic economy, but it was more than a political question.
A state-sponsored investigation during the dry season in October, 1846,
reported 3,120 cubic feet a minute drawn from the river for the Erie,
wMIe the Genesee Valley Canal required 9,060 cubic feet, leaving but
5,860 for the mills, wMch normally consumed double that quantity.
Spurred to clear the channel west of Rochester, the canal board explored
the possibility of converting the small lakes south of Rochester into
reservoirs for the replenishment of the river during dry seasons. A dam
in the upper Genesee gorge above Mount Morris was likewise considered.
Yet the damage claims of local millers were rejected at an open hearing
in Rochester, and no effective means appeared to compensate for the
increasing demands of the Genesee Canal. In the meantime irreparable
damage to Rochester s industrial aspirations resulted from the protracted
discussion of the threat to its water power. 213

In similar fashion the credit resources of the community suffered
from a conservative and hesitant policy. The short term extensions of

^^ Democrat, May 19, 1848; Nat. Cycl. Amer. Biog., XX, 329.

210 Raymond Scrapbook, p. 197; Democrat, Apr. 12, 1842; Sept. 24, 1849; Ad
vertiser, June 28, 1848; Genesee Farmer, XI (1850), 90.

^Hunt s Merchants Magazine, XVII (1847), 48-52; Democrat, Feb. 14, Apr.
20, 1844; Jan. 20, 1846.

212 William Reynolds to Abelard Reynolds, Rochester, Aug. 17, 1846, Reynolds
Papers; Memorial of the Inhabitants of the City of Rochester Interested in the
Water of the Genesee (Rochester, 1846).

213 Daniel Marsh, Report on the Diversion of the Water of the Genesee River
(Rochester, 1847) ; "Canal Board Report on the Diversion of the Waters of the
Genesee," Assembly Doc. (1848), No. 172; "Report of the Canal Board on Honeoye,
Conesus, and other lakes," Senate Doc. (1850), No. 40; Memorial of the Owners
of Water of the Genesee River at -Rochester (Rochester, 1853).

236 THE WATER-POWER CITY

the Bank of Rochester charter were considered most unfriendly on the
part of the legislature, but the final expiration of the charter in 1847,
removing 225,000 from local circulation, was not offset as it might easily
have been by the organization of a new free bank. 214 Though Rochester
banks developed a reputation for stability after 1842, critics stressed the
need for a more venturesome support of new industries. The contraction
in bank note circulation was overcome by 1844, yet local credit facilities
did not begin to compare with those of Buffalo. 215 Indeed, the city s
banking capital of $1,1 60,000 in 1849 gave it a rank of twenty-sixth
among the cities of the nation and presented a serious handicap to the
aspiring industrialists of the city seventeenth in population. 216 Fortu
nately the situation improved late in the forties when Freeman Clarke,
an able young banker, formerly engaged in numerous enterprises west
of the city, located in Rochester and strengthened its ties with capitalists
both in Buffalo and the East. 217

<

Though much was expected from the banks and the waterfalls, more
fruitful developments occurred in three humble industries which re
ceived little attention from the advocates of an industrial city and still
less benefit from the waterfalls. Much of the leadership and capital
came likewise from new sources, frequently from the East or from
Europe. While several of the new ventures soon disappeared, prom
ising beginnings occurred in the shoe, clothing, and nursery fields
during the forties, laying the foundations for expansion in the next
period.

Numerous shoemakers, long active in Rochester, first began to or
ganize along industrial lines during the early forties. Shoemakers
"boarding houses" appeared where the apprentices sewed the shoes by
hand, yet the shoe merchant still took his measurements directly from
the customer s feet, cutting the pattern and often the leather himself
before dispatching the job by runner to the boarding house. Shoes left
on the hands of these merchant-craftsmen gradually accumulated stocks
available to customers unable to wait for a fitting, but it was not until
1842 that the tanner, Henry Churchill, and the shoemaker, Jesse W.
Hatch, joined in a partnership with the avowed object of producing
ready-made shoes. The arrival of an expert English shoe cutter the next
year enabled Hatch to advertise approved styles and standard sizes at
prices considerably below those asked by the older shoe merchants,
notably Jacob Gould and Oren Sage. The successful entry a year later

*** Advertiser, May 16, 1845; Democrat, Apr. 23, 1847.

^Hwnt s Merchants? Magazine, IV (1841), 476-479; Democrat, Sept. 17, 1842,
Nov. 20, 1844; Directory (1844), pp. 24-26.

***Himfs Merchants Magazine, XXI (1849), 458,* U. S. Census (1850).
217 Freeman Clarke Letters.

FLOUR CITY: PROSPERITY AND ADVERSITY 237

of robbers who removed over one hundred pairs of shoes supplied a
unique advertisement of Hatch and Company s facilities. 22 *

By the end of the decade ten fairly well established shoe firms em
ployed upwards of 500 workmen in Rochester, paying an estimated
$75,000 in annual wages and double that amount for materials. Approxi
mately 175,000 pairs of shoes were turned out in 1848. Hatch and
Company on State Street, now one of the larger firms, specialized in the
Congress Shoe and various styles popular among the ladies. 21 *

The clothing industry experienced a similar transition from custom
tailoring to the production of the ready-made articles displayed in the
"emporiums of fashion" on Exchange Street. Myer Greentree, a recent
arrival from Germany, was possibly the first merchant tailor in Roches
ter to produce standard patterns, while the increasing number of
German- Jewish immigrants supplied workmen to sew the garments cut
by their enterprising countryman. By the mid-century no less than
thirty establishments engaged in the manufacture and sale of clothing,
though the majority, as small shops, were generally operated by two or
three families who took most of the sewing to their homes. Eighteen of
the shops clustered in the low wooden structures that lined the northern
side of the main bridge. It proved an advantageous location for the
display of the city s new industrial specialty, which soon employed an
estimated 1,800 persons and turned out a product valued at $400,000
in I848. 220

While no power-driven machinery had yet appeared in either the shoe
or clothing factories, in other respects the break with old handicraft
traditions was apparent. A bonnet shop, employing some thirty girls in
1843, even more closely resembled a factory, while a glove and whip
factory employed sixty-two others. 221 Several breweries recovered from
the more temperate thirties, 222 and each of six large brickyards averaged
a million bricks annually, 223 speeding the replacement of the old frame
buildings in the central portion of the city.

Signs of a new day for Rochester appeared on every hand at the
mid-century. The organization of a steam engine factory, ready to fur-

218 Jesse W. Hatch, "The Old-Time Shoemaker and Shoemaking," R. H. S. }
Pub., V, 82-86; William H. Samson, "Studies in Local History," Scrapbook, LI,
LVI; Democrat, July 4, 1844.

219 Democrat, June 2, 1848. These statistics were provided by "a gentleman who
is largely engaged in the business and conversant with its conditions and extent
throughout the city." However, the figures appear out of proportion to the smaller
figures in the N. Y. Census of 1855.

220 Democrat, June 16, 1848; Hunt s Merchants Magazine, XX (1849), 347-
348. See the caution regarding these figures in the preceding note.

221 Democrat, Feb. 16, Mar. i, 1844; June 16, 1848.

222 N. Y. Census (1845) > Plate No. 27, 3.

223 Raymond Scrapbook, p. 198.

238 CITY

a for the faltering power of the Genesee^ 234 and the estab-

of the Rochester Gas Light Company ; with its promise of
Rochester out of the dark, 225 gave assurance for the city s
future, further developments in each of these fields were em-

by the difficulty of importing coal. One of the most interesting
ventures of the day was that of Samuel L. Selden, an ingenious lawyer
to perfect a machine for the manufacture of lead pipe.
Despite repeated discouragements^ Selden worked away, hoping to pro
duce a cheap pipe that would carry either water or gas or the newly
invented telegraph lines and thus win the vast markets foreshadowed
by these rapidly developing services. Before a satisfactory machine was
designed in Rochester, however, other inventors had made progress,
defeating local efforts to capture that field. 226

Though not suspected at the time, Rochester s future was to be more
closely identified with its budding nursery industry ? product of the
Genesee Country s fertility rather than of its water power. Indeed,
despite a growing reliance on raw materials brought from a distance,
the city s dose ties with its Genesee hinterland were still jealously
guarded. When Western wheat began to supersede that of the Genesee,
renewed emphasis was pkced on livestock, and attention was given to
a more varied crop program. 227 The decline in the productivity of some
fields spurred the use of fertilizers, and with the appearance in the late
thirties of a favored species of mulberry tree, the Chinese Morus multi-
cauls, supposed to thrive in the soil and climate of up-state New York,
thousands of seedlings and silkworm eggs were peddled through the
valley by Eastern nurserymen. 228 Yet the craze departed as quickly as
it had appeared, and the most determined growers were able to produce
only a few yards of silk doth for display at the annual agricultural
fairs of the early forties. 229

More striking displays of fruit and flowers were sent to the annual

224 Western Almanac and Franklin Calendar (Rochester, 2846), back cover adv.;
Raymond Scrapbook, pp. 197, 198, 200.

225 F. J. Leerburger, "The Development of the Gas Industry in Rochester to
1906" (1940), typescript, Roch. Hist. Soc.

m EIsabeth S. S. Eaton to her husband, Rochester, Dec. 18, 25, 1841, Jan. n,
1842, E. S. S. Eaton Letters; Samuel L. Selden to Freeman Clarke, Freeman Clarke
Letters, 1842-43; Nat. Cy. Am. Biog., IV, 154.

227 N. Y. State Agricultural Society, Transactions (1844), IV, 99-101. WilKam
Gaxbutfs report on his careful farm records of the previous twenty years is of
great value. Less than a fourth of his 2oo~acre wheat farm was planted to wheat
in 1842, while his cattle numbered 300 sheep, 30 hogs, 15 cows, and 8 horses. An
income of $2200 to $5200 minus $1200 to $1600 expenses during the thirties was
now down to $1578,02 minus $1204 in 1842.

228 Genesee Farmer, V (1835), 15; VH (1837), 2, n, 22 , 155, 194, 380; VHI
(1838), 240, 330.

Farmer, VIII, 115; Republican, Jan. 13, Aug. 29, 1843.

FLOUR CITY: PROSPERITY AND ADVERSITY 239

fairs by the rapidly developing nurseries of Rochester. Discouragement
over losses in the mulberry fad helped to persuade William Reynolds
and M. B. Bateham to lease their nursery on SopMa Street in 1839 to
their young manager, George Ellwanger. Reared In a German vineyard
but with four years experience in Rochester, Ellwanger soon joined in
partnership with a recently arrived Irishman, Patrick Barry, who had
served Ms apprenticeship at the leading nursery of the day, that of
William Prince on Long Island. By October, 1840, Ellwanger and Barry
were ready to announce the establishment of their Mount Hope Garden
and Nurseries on a seven-acre plot in the southeast portion of the city.
Asa Rowe s nursery on the northwestern edge of town, and Samuel
Moulson s on the northeastern outskirts, covered larger areas and adver
tised extensive selections, but Ellwanger and Barry, diligently turning
aH profits into the business, were able to double their holdings by 1844
and import a fresh stock of seedlings from Europe. 280

The nursery business proved a happy find for the Flour City. The
canal gave Rochester nurserymen an eight-day advantage over Hudson
Valley competitors in supplying the Western market, where the demand
was expanding most rapidly. Despite the northern location, which inured
the plantings to rigorous climates and assured the hardihood necessary
to survive transplantation, the moderating influence of Lake Ontario s
seldom-frozen waters provided a saf eguard against the severe cold spells
which sometimes afflicted Eastern rivals. The slow-sailing vessels on the
Atlantic protected the American market from easy exploitation by Euro
pean horticulturists, while fresh plantings, brought directly to Rochester
from abroad, as George Ellwanger did in 1844 and succeeding years,
offered an escape from the diseases which were infecting some older
nurseries. Moreover, the nurseries afforded a profitable use for fields
adjoining the city and helped to stimulate a revival of fruit culture in
western New York. 231

These developments were only faintly suggested in 1843 when the
state fair met at Rochester. A ten-acre plot on State Street one mile
north of the Four Corners had been fenced in for the exhibits, and the
public houses and private homes of Rochester were filled to overflowing
by visitors from all parts of the state. Canal boats, trains, and stages
converged on the city, and soon every wheeled vehicle within a radius
of fifty miles appeared to have joined the procession, so that the streets
were jammed with shouting drivers. Ex-President Van Buren, Governor
Seward, and Daniel Webster were on hand, attracting 20,000 around the
speakers platform, while others thronged the cattle yards or attended

230 Blake McKelvey, "The Flower City: Center of Nurseries and Fruit Orchards,"
R. H. S., Pub., XVIII, 129-136.

231 McKelvey, "The Flower City," pp. 129-136; Democrat, Sept. n, 1840; July
1 6, Sept. 2, 1841.

240 THE WATER-POWER CITY

the plowing natch held on the eastern outskirts of town (near the
present site of the Women s Campus of the University of Rochester).
Though James S. Wadsworth from up the valley presided with Henry
O ? ReMy as recording secretary, the latter, having already removed to
Albany, attended as a visitor, and few of Rochester s earlier leaders
were in evidence. Grain prizes were awarded, E. S. Beach and Company
receiving a medal for their superfine flour, but more interest was shown
in the cattle show and in the horticultural exhibit, which surpassed any
previously held at the state fairs. New interests and new blood were
evidenced when young Ellwanger and Barry captured the first prize for
their floral exhibit, featuring dahlias and roses and a hundred other
potted flowers, 232

By the mid-century local nurseries had taken firm root. A keen com
petition for prizes developed at the annual exhibits of the Genesee
Valley Horticultural Society, usually held at Rochester in collaboration
with the Monroe County Agricultural Society. Several new nurseries
were established on the city s outskirts by seedmen from the East or
from Europe, and young Josiah W. Bissell joined with another Roches-
terian, Horace Hooker, in the development of a nursery on the old
Canandaigua road (East Avenue). Yet Ellwanger and Barry maintained
their leadership by expanding their grounds to nearly one hundred acres
and more especially by introducing for the first time in America the
new varieties of dwarf fruit trees then being developed in Europe.
Barry, on one of the partners frequent visits to the continent, made a
special study of the methods of pruning for fruitfulness, and by the
mid-century their orchards and display gardens were gaining recogni
tion as the best in America. 233

In the midst of the growing concern lest the wheat and other products
of the vast prairies of the West inundate the Genesee, the nurserymen
of Rochester were able to offer a new activity for neighboring fanners.
The prospect of invading the English market with cheese and meats
cured in the old Irish fashion was frequently considered, especially
after the lowering of the British tariffs, 234 while numerous petitions
asked that New York State produce be given preferential rates on the
canal, 285 but popular interest centered in the expanding orchards of the
area. The verdant nurseries and blooming orchards that bordered
Rochester on all sides made it a model community in the eyes of
mid-century romanticists, naturalists, and utilitarians alike. When the

282 N. Y. State Agricultural Society, Transactions, HI (1843), 19-28; Adver
tiser, Sept. 25, 1843-

^McKelvey, "The Flower City," pp. 134-144.

384 N. Y. State Agricultural Society, Transactions, IV, 238-242; Genesee Farmer,

vn (1846), 39.

^Hwnfs Merchants Magazine, XII (1845), 81; Genesee Farmer, VI (1845),
147-148; VII, 8o-i.

XL INTERIOR VIEW or REYNOLDS ARCADE, 1851

XII. BANQUET SCENE IN CORINTHIAN HALL, 1851

FLOUR CITY; PROSPERITY AND ADVERSITY 241

state fair visited the city again in 1851 an unprecedented throng of
iGOjOOo taxed the city s facilities to the limit, while the horticultural
displays prepared under the supervision of Lev! A. Ward surpassed any
previously held in America, with Ellwanger and Barry taking most of
the prizes. 22 * 3 It would only be a few years before visitors would remark
that a "Flower City" was rising to supersede the old "Flour City." aT

236 McKelvey, "The Flower City," pp. 143-145.

237 Dewey Scrapbook, General Information, III, 93, a letter of 1860, Roch.

Hist. Soc.

CHAPTER IX

CIVIC AND INSTITUTIONAL AFFAIRS
1834-1850

MODIFICATIONS In Rochester^ civic spirit and institutional ac
tivity matched the striking changes in economic outlook during
the forties. The same depression which chastened so many
adventuresome members of the community curbed the optimism with
wMch the newly established city faced several of its problems in the
mid-thirties. If economy and caution gained respectability as private
virtues, they became at the same time hard and fast civic standards.
Unfortunately the increased number and complexity of the city s prob
lems made retrenchment difficult. Every such effort merely aggravated
the situation. The establishment of varied semi-public institutions some
what relieved the public authorities, though the community s fiscal
burden was not so much reduced as made more palatable. The develop
ment of a public school system and the provision of several state and
county institutions hastened the transition from a community dominated
by individuals to a city of varied institutions and organizations the
urban pattern Rochester was rapidly assuming at the mid-century.

TOWASD Civic COMPLACENCY

A healthy spirit of optimism characterized the mid-thirties when the
newly established city girded itself for the tasks ahead. The assumption
of full municipal responsibilities had been deferred so long that major
problems were at hand. Leading men of affairs eagerly assumed public
office. An astounding number were called briefly into civic service as
aldermen, fire wardens, school trustees, and the like. Unfortunately a
sharp disagreement over the ends to be attained added fuel to existing
political rivalries, discouraging the efforts of the less partisan. The
democratic tradition that the honors of office should be passed along
resulted in short terms, usually completed before a firm grasp of the
community s problems was acquired. As the years passed, more and
more of the numerous candidates enrolled from those having some in
terest to gain or safeguard, and by the mid-forties the concern for
reduced taxes had gained dominant representation.

The first city election saw the triumph of the new Whig and temper
ance forces. The council included among its ten regular and assistant

CIVIC AND INSTITUTIONAL AFFAIRS 243

members such estimable citizens as Dr. Frederick F. Backus, Colonel
Ashbel RHey, and Thomas Kempshall, who promptly elected Jonathan
Child mayor. Despite the previous attempt to reduce the tax limit from
$S,ooo to 15,000^ the council found it necessary to exhaust all revenue
sources. Before the year was out a total of $i 8,690 had been expended
on the various community functions. The most extensive outlays were
for street improvements, fire-fighting equipment, and general govern
mental expenses a foretaste of developments soon to occur in these
fields. Small special levies supported the schools and the poor, yet the
council s restraint was evident both in its refusal to approve a compre
hensive sewer plan and in its failure to use the authority granted by
the charter to raise $20,000 for the construction of a public water Astern. 1

A major resolve of the first council was to check the flow of liquor,
which had become a public scandal in the eyes of the more respectable
elements. Yet, despite the long agitation for this reform, the Whigs
pledged to its adoption had been elected by slim majorities, impelling
the council to make some concessions. Four liquor licenses were accord
ingly issued on payment of forty- and fifty-dollar fees. The compromise,
however, represented such a drastic reduction from the hundred-odd
licenses granted at more reasonable rates in previous years that the
opposition forces gained an easy victory at the next election. The only
successful Whig was the venerable Dr. Matthew Brown, whose long
public service during village days assured wide support. Hie other new
councilmen included such distinguished Democrats as James Seymour
and Isaac R. Elwood, as well as two grocers personally interested in
liquor permits. 2

The adoption of a more lenient license policy precipitated the dra
matic resignation of Mayor Child. Under the charter the mayor was a
weak executive, appointed by the council and charged with the execu
tion of its ordinances, with scant discretion or authority of his own.
In order, however, to assure some continuity in the official personnel,
the mayor s term carried over six months after the expiration of the
council which selected Mm, and Jonathan Child thus found himself
obliged to sign the numerous licenses granted by the second council.
The only alternative was to tender his resignation, which he accordingly
did in a lengthy address that marked the high point of local temperance
agitation for many years. 3

1 Donald W. Gilbert, "The Government and Finances of Rochester, N. Y."
(Ph.D., thesis, Harvard Univ., 1930), Tables I and II. I am deeply indebted to
this scholarly and painstaking study for statistical information on fiscal matters
used in this section and elsewhere.

2 Henry O Reilly, Sketches of Rochester, pp. 264-266; Gilbert, "Government and
Finances," pp. 142-143; Rochester Observer, May 29, 1829.

s Rochester Daily Democrat, June 27, 1835; Common Council Proceedings,
June 23, 1835 (hereafter C. C., ProcJ.

244 THE WATER-POWER CITY

Otter problems pressed for action, and after choosing as mayor
Jamb Gould, a prominent Democrat and prosperous shoe merchant,
the council proceeded with vigor to its duties. Most urgent was the need
for street and sewer improvements, and within a year Buffalo Street
was macadamized, several others were partially improved, and many
sewers repaired, at a total cost of $35,980.* Although assessments on
adjacent property owners and loans negotiated at the banks with the
anticipated payments as security met these charges, when the total
expenditure soared to $59,673, the issue of economy became dominant,
enabling the Whigs to capture six seats in the third council. 5

Economy, however, was more easily advocated than achieved. When
plans for a new Buffalo Street sewer, with stone walls five feet Mgh and
three feet apart, were approved, the project was rushed to completion
in an effort to correct the unsanitary conditions that threatened to
blight the city^s principal street. Yet the $4,000 expended on this sewer
proved scarcely half the cost of the fifty acres acquired south of the
city for Mount Hope Cemetery, while a new public market was con
structed during the year. 6 These outlays, added to the normal expenses,
compelled the council to boost its general tax levy to $15,000, almost
double the legal maximum, and to fund its various floating debts at
$i5,ooo. T Abraham Schermerhom, chosen mayor at the expiration of
Gould s term, resigned after two months when the gathering clouds of
the depression required his attention at the bank. Thomas Kempshall,
his Whig successor, full of the optimism of local millers that year,
proceeded so vigorously with street improvements, aided by the Demo
cratic fourth council, that he was sent to Congress the next fall. 8

The confidence which animated the business community that winter
took hold of the civic authorities. When the bank suspension threatened
a shortage both of small notes and of funds to continue the public works,
the city fathers boldly came to the rescue. At the suggestion of Henry
E. Rochester, prominent Whig, the Democratic council issued $6,000
in shinplasters to be paid for labor on the public streets and secured
against local assessments. Before the end of the year, over $50,000 was
expended from this source, considerably aiding the unemployed, while
useful improvements included the grading of Main Street hill just east
of the bridge, the repair of the bridge itself, seriously damaged by the
great flood of 1835, ^ e construction of Andrews Street Bridge above the
main falls, and the resurfacing of several streets in the central district.

Gilbert, Table HI-i, part 4.

6 Gilbert, Table I-i.

*C. C, Proc., Dec. 20, 1836, June 26, 1838, Jan. 8, 1839; Democrat, June 9,
July 28, 1836; Jan. 4, 1837.

7 Gilbert, Table Vm, pt i, Table XL

* Democrat, Mar. 8, 1837; Rock. Republican, Nov. 13, 1838.

CIVIC AND INSTITUTIONAL AFFAIRS 245

When Elisha Johnson became mayor that January, he could congratu
late the city upon the "enlarged views" of Ms predecessors, noting that
the one major improvement still needed was a public water works. 9

But as 1838 with Its deflated flour prices brought gloom to the com
munity, the popular attitude toward municipal expenditures began to
change. The Democratic council was turned out, and Mayor Johnson
sounded a note of caution. 10 Nevertheless the Whigs, who took over the
council and finally the mayor s post (to which they named Thomas H.
Rochester) and all other offices as well, could not muster the courage
to apply the knife. Indeed 3 a generous outlay on the streets and for fire
apparatus seemed in line with the new Whig emphasis on internal Im
provements. Under their auspices the city s expenditures exceeded
$100,000, both in 1838 and 1839, while the gross debt was pushed up
to $126,000 by the latter date. Partisan criticism was drowned under
the mounting clamor of the Log Cabin campaign, and meanwhile the
benefits derived from these unprecedented outlays were eagerly enjoyed
until after the election when, suddenly, a drastic reduction In municipal
expenditures was achieved. 11

^

Dissatisfaction with the municipal services gained frequent expres
sion in charter revisions during these years. Neither the repeated
amendments nor the extensive outlays of the late thirties produced very
suitable results, however, and a feeling of disillusionment or distrust
developed, heightened, no doubt, by the general gloorn of the depres
sion. The caution and complacency which marked the forties was re
lieved only in a few services, such as the public schools, by vigorous
efforts toward reform. Elsewhere, the absence of an effective leadership
greatly retarded the growth of Rochester s civic functions. 12

Most of the charter amendments, which occurred almost annually
after 1836, sought a redivision of authority among the various officials.
The position of the mayor was gradually improved, first by the grant
of an annual stipend of $400 in 1838, second by the provision for his
popular election made in a state law of 1840 applying to all cities, next
by the grant of a limited veto power in 1844, and finally, in 1847, by
the power to appoint police officials. These changes modified the previ
ously dominant authority of the council, while the creation of a separate

9 Democrat, May 15, 1837; C. C. Proc., May 23, Sept. 19, 1837; Gilbert, op. cit.,
151-154; O Reilly, Sketches of Rochester, pp. 268-270, *38o.

10 Roch. Republican, Mar. 27, 1838; Democrat, Mar. 8, 1838.

11 Gilbert, Tables I-i, XI-i; see below.

12 Rochester s limited achievements in the civic field contrasted more strikingly
with local cultural and economic developments than with civic accomplishments in
comparable American cities, yet even in the latter comparison Rochester appeared
hesitant and retarded during the mid- and late-forties. See John A. Fairlie, Munici
pal Administration (New York, 1910), pp. 81-86, passim.

246 THE WATER-POWER CITY

board of education likewise reduced the aldermen s prerogatives. But
the frequent addition of new functions and the steady increase in the
city s taxing authority maintained the influence of the council, though
the gradual provision for 129 separate elective officers by tie mid-
century revealed Rochester s growing distrust of its representative
body. 13

Distrust was likewise displayed in the attempt to earmark the various
revenues and to fix by charter the amounts to be expended on the dif
ferent services. Despite the inability of any of the successive councils
to live within the prescribed fiscal limits, authority for increased taxes
was only reluctantly granted. At no time was the taxing power suffi
cient to enable the city to operate on a strictly legal basis. The tax
limit advanced from $8,000 to $20,000 during the city s first decade,
reaching $28,000 by the mid-century, but both the tax levies and the
normal expenditures exceeded these limits severalfold throughout the
period. 14

A major handicap was the lack of long-term, responsible leadership.
The election of a fresh slate of aldermen every year produced inefficien
cies only slightly mitigated by occasional second-termers, while the
overlapping term of the mayor proved to be more a handicap than a
benefit, especially in the early years, when the political allegiance of the
council shifted almost annually. The creation of a superintendent of
public works and other administrative officials presented an opportunity
for increased efficiency, but in practice these officials were likewise
replaced every year by inexperienced men. A charter amendment in
1837 provided two-year overlapping terms for the aldermen in an effort
to secure more continuity, and two or three local party leaders sought
repeated election to their former posts. Yet the only men to serve six
consecutive years in any city office were the Democratic recorder, Isaac
Hills, and the Whig alderman, Lewis Selye. Unfortunately, the value
of the dower turnover in the forties was lost as the number of aldermen
increased to eighteen and the total number of officials topped one
hundred. 15

Small wonder that Rochester s civic developments were occasionally
halted and thrown into reverse amidst the babble of opinion produced
by the hundred-odd aldermen who presided over the city during its

13 W. Earl Weller, "The Development of the Charter of the City of Rochester,
1817 to 1938" (M. A. thesis at the Univ. Roch., 1938). I am greatly indebted to
this thesis for accurate and specific information concerning the successive pro
visions affecting the early charter law of Rochester. See also W. E. Weller, "The
Expanding Charter Life of Rochester," R. H. S., Pub., XII, 75-82.

14 Gilbert, Tables I, H, VII, and VEDE; Weller, "Development of the Charter,"
pp. 77-78-

M William Peck, Semi-Centennwl History of Rochester (Syracuse, 1884), pp.
184-199, presents full lists of most of the municipal officials for each year.

CIVIC AND INSTITUTIONAL AFFAIRS 247

first fifteen years. Yet at least a dozen among the fifteen mayors of
the period would appear in any list of its leading citizens. Their
democratic ardor and individual resourcefulness piloted the community
through many difficulties, performing several of its functions very
creditably after the standards of the day.

The improvement and maintenance of its streets remained the city s
most burdensome problem. The krge expenditures in this field during
the late thirties, overshadowing all other outlays^ had greatly improved
the condition of the central streets, giving Rochester a fair name in
this respect among cities of its class by 1840. Some headway was also
made with a campaign to line the streets with shade trees. 16 Unfortu
nately, the marshland over which much of the city had been built
provided a poor base for the macadam surface then in use. Great ruts
quickly developed after each wet season, requiring extensive and costly
repairs. Though an experiment with wooden blocks on State Street
seemed to promise a satisfactory solution, a few years of heavy use
proved discouraging. 17

The council, appropriating several hundred dollars each spring for a
thorough cleaning of the streets, generally depended upon the adjacent
property owners to keep them in shape through the rest of the year.
Yet they were frequently described in the public press as "in the most
filthy condition possible." 1S Inadequate drainage remained a major diffi
culty, but whenever a drive started for extensive repairs, an opposing
demand for economy appeared. As a result, the city s outlays for street
maintenance and improvement averaged only $16,000 annually during
the forties, barely sufficient to keep the earlier improvements in con
dition. 11 *

The city s sidewalks, bridges, and sewers were similarly neglected.
Efforts to compel property owners to build and keep their sidewalks in
repair met with indifferent success. 20 Shopkeepers in the center of town
frequently obstructed the walks with produce or building materials,
while the task of removing such impediments as outside stairways and
signposts required constant vigilance. 21 The condition of the bridges

16 Rochester Gem and Ladies Amulet, Apr. 30, 1836.

^Rochester Daily Advertiser, Mar. i, 1839; Democrat, Aug. 21, 1839; July 30,
1846. New York and Philadelphia had likewise experimented unsuccessfully with
wooden blocks a few years before, and street paving remained an unsolved prob
lem in most American cities at the mid-century. See George W. Tillson, Street
Pavements and Paving Materials (New York, 1900), pp. 11-13.

18 Democrat, July 12, 1839; Jan. 24, 184$; Aug. 25, 1846; Rock. Republican,
Apr. 4, 1848.

10 Gilbert, pp. no, 118, Table HI, part 4; Democrat, Feb. 27, 1841; Jan. 24,
1845.

20 Langworthy Scrapbook, II, i, Roch. Hist. Soc.

^Democrat, Apr. 15, 1848; Roch. Republican, Apr. 4, 1848; Advertiser, Apr. 19,
June 5, July 28, 1848.

2 4 8 THE WATER-POWER CITY

repeated complaints, with only the newly constructed Clarissa
Street bridge giving full satisfaction. Several fatal accidents occurred
late passers fell through gaps in the planking, while a broken
axle or an injured horse was a frequent result of hurried passages over
one or another of the four river bridges or the more numerous canal
crossings. 22 The condition of the sewers was, if possible, even more de
plorable, In 1848 Mayor Joseph Field condemned the failure of earlier
officials to prepare a sewer plan or keep a sewer map showing the
exact location of these essential drains, yet no remedy was provided
at the time. 23 The unsatisfactory character of several of the sewers
was disagreeably evident at numerous points, particularly during
wet seasons when many cellars were flooded. The cost of an effective
remedy forestalled such action, though new sewers were occasionally
built. 24

The sixty oil lamps scattered about the city during the mid-forties
gave such a dim light that one humorous critic praised them for guard
ing late travelers from the danger of stumbling over the lamp posts. 25
At times the council felt impelled to stop the expenditure for oil, which
averaged about $400 annually. In 1848, however, when several of the
community s more enterprising businessmen established a gas company,
the argument that "Troy is about to emerge from darkness" by the use
of gas prompted the Rochester council to approve a limited experiment
with twelve open-flame gas lamps. Sixty lamps were provided the next
year, increasing the cost to $1,019, but Rochester could at least boast
of being one among the half-dozen American cities enjoying gas lights
before the mid-century. 28

Several minor problems required action by the city fathers. Though
Mayor Johnson recommended the construction of a city hall in 1838,
the first attempt to bring the scattered offices together was not made
until 1846, when two floors were rented in Everard Peck s building near
the Court House. 27 The council acted more promptly after the burning
of the bridge market in 1834, possibly because the outlay for the new
market on Front Street was to be recovered from the anticipated stall

Mar. 25, Apr. 4., 1835; Feb. 10, 1840; Feb. i, July 14, 1843; Jan,
24, 1845.

23 Gilbert, pp. 226-228; Advertiser, Oct. 21, 1848.

24 Democrat, Oct. 24, 1848; Jan. 31, 1849. Nevertheless, Rochester s sewers did
not compare too unfavorably with those of most other American cities, except
for Boston, where a model sewer system had been installed in the twenties. See
Fairlie, Municipal Administration, pp. 247248.

25 R, H, S., Pub., XI, 39-

28 Frank J. Leerburger, "The Development of the Gas Industry in Rochester,"
MS, Roch. Hist. Soc.; Rock. Republican, Mar. 28, 1848; Advertiser, Nov. 14,
1848; Genesee Olio, Oct. 21, 1843; FairHe^ Municipal Administration, p. 282.

27 C C. Procv Max. 8, 1838; Raymond Scrapbook, p. 16, Roch. Hist. Soc.

CIVIC AND INSTITUTIONAL AFFAIRS 249

rentals. Both the new city market, costing $35 7 ooo ? and the hay scales
procured at a cost of $10,000 in 1843 were sound investments, netting a
substantial return before their abandonment several years later. 28 The
outlays on Mount Hope Cemetery were similarly justified by the returns
from lot sales not to mention that project ? s merits from the viewpoint
of long-range civic planning.

The authorities displayed little foresight in connection with the pro
posal that the Falls Field on the east bank overlooking the main falls
be acquired and preserved as a public promenade. 29 While neglecting
that marvelous opportunity to safeguard one of the area s natural beau
ties, the council gave some attention to the six public squares donated
to the city by various promoters. Several hundred trees were set out on
these plots during the forties, apparently with less regard for their
beauty than with the hope of stopping the ball games and militia re
views which disturbed nearby residents. Franklin Square frequently
accommodated a political rally, but the prevailing theory of park usage
appeared in the regulation which restrained anyone from opening the
gates or otherwise trespassing on the public squares without written
permission from the superintendent. 30

The most serious instance of civic complacency was the failure to
make any provision for a water system. Authority to raise funds for
this purpose, granted in Rochester s first city charter, spurred study of
the problem. Mayor Johnson presented a detailed plan in 1838 for a
public water works to be constructed section by section as needed, with
the total capital cost of $150,000 spread over a period of years and the
water rates pledged for the payment of the bonds. The savings enjoyed
through a reduction in the excessive fire insurance rates would, Johnson
argued, more than cancel the individual s water payments, leaving the
health benefits and other assets as clear gain. 31 But the possibility of
tapping a fairly steady flow of water at one or another of the rock
ledges that could be found a few feet underground almost anywhere
within the city favored a general reliance on private wells for domestic
use. Accordingly, although most cities of its class developed public water

28 Gilbert, Tables I and VIII. The clerk at the hay scales took in $130.50 during
December, 1844, for weighing 522 loads of hay, see Democrat, Jan. n, 1845.

29 O Reilly, Sketches of Rochester, p. *38i.

^Raymond Scrapbook, p. 56; Samson Scrapbook, No. 65, p. 20, Roch. Hist
Soc,; Genesee Farmer, VIII (1847), 27; Ordinances of the Common Council of
the City of Rochester (Rochester, 1844)* ch. iii, sec. 22. Except for the New Eng
land village commons, forerunners of such public squares as Rochester boasted,
the city park had scarcely appeared in America at the mid-century. Philadelphia
had one, but New York City did not acquire Central Park until the fifties. See
Fairlie, Municipal Administration, pp. 262-263.

^Elisha Johnson, Report of the Mayor to the Common Council of the City
of Rochester on the Subject of Supplying the City with Water (Rochester, 1838).

THE WATER-POWER CITY

yearSj 82 Rochester contented itself with the numerous
available surface water.

The city paid dearly in mounting fire losses for this economy. The
occasional fatal injury of a victim trapped in a flaming building added
to the SQHJ record of property losses, which reached such a point by
the mid-forties that they were said to exceed the per capita losses of
every other city in the country. 33 By good fortune the flames never broke
completely out of control. Apparently no single fire destroyed as many
as a score of buildings, yet a half-dozen was not an unusual toll, while
frequently a series of adjoining shops or an extended rookery was
entirely consumed before the flames could be checked. 34 Several of the
principal mills and factories, taverns and business blocks, homes and
churches were among the structures lost, though the most frequent
victim was the backyard stable. 5 The annual damages averaged around
f 8o y OQO during the mid-forties, increasing as the decade advanced until
two dry months in the late summer of 1849 brought a succession of
fires whose ravages equalled the previolis annual average. 80

Insurance rates mounted until the estimated annual premiums
reached $20,000. But when the city council (investigating a proposal
that a municipal insurance company be established in order to reap
a benefit from these outlays) discovered that still larger damages were
collected each year, the project to insure Rochester was shelved as a
bad risk. 3 * 7 When the enlargement of several underground reservoirs
and the redoubled efforts of the firemen failed to check either the in
creasing fire losses or the mounting insurance rates, William A. Reynolds
installed one of "Hubbard s patent Rotating Engines" in the Hydraulic
Building ready, in case of fire, to pump water from the raceway through
iron pipes under Main Street into the $100,000 Arcade Building where
a private watchman stood guard at all times. 38

The volunteer fire companies had meanwhile increased to ten, with a
total enrollment of approximately three hundred men. The companies
frequently staged colorful parades, one club sporting red shirts and
skull caps while another wore blue sailors middies. The annual fire-

82 Johnson, Report of the Mayor, pp. 4-5; J. N. Lamed, History of Buffalo
(New York, 1911), I, 156-159; n, 269; Bessie L. Pierce, A History of Chicago
(New York, 1937) , I, 352-353 J Fairlie, pp. 273-274.

33 Democrat, Feb. 15, 1845; The Newspaper Index lists 13 fire fatalities during
the forties.

w Advertiser, Nov. 3, 1842; Rock. Republican, Nov. 7, 1843; Democrat, July 3,
16, 1845; Aug. 21, 1846; June i, 1848.

85 Rock. Republican, Jan. 7, 1840; Feb. 29, 1848; Democrat, Feb. 18, 1846; Jan.
ii 1849.

35 Advertiser, Oct. i, 4, 13, 1849.

37 C. C. Proc. f Aug. 7, 1838.

^WflMam A. Reynolds to N. Gray, Esq., Rochester, June 8, 1850, Wm. A.
Reynolds Letter Book, MS, R. P. L.

CIVIC AND INSTITUTIONAL AFFAIRS 251

men s reviews supplied excitement as each company strove to pump a
stream of water higher than its fellows/ 8 but they never gave entire
satisfaction at the scene of a fire. Despite the election of responsible
foremen, riots occasionally broke out between rival companies. 40 The
Ever Ready Neptune Bucket Company No. i, a group of lads of six
teen and seventeen years, 41 was not the only company to display in
subordination when its ambitions for better equipment were disregarded.
A temperance campaign among the firemen prompted sixteen to take
the pledge, while arrangements were made to distribute hot coffee
instead of beer and brandy at the fires, 42 yet the fires continued to rage.

The council devoted considerable attention to the fire companies. A
new engine was purchased from Lewis Selye every two or three years,
a hose company was organized and equipped, and fire houses were pro
vided for each of the ten companies by the mid-century. 43 So elaborate
had the equipment become by 1843 tnat a visitor from Buffalo felt
constrained to recognize the superiority of the Flour City s fire depart
ment, though he kept discreetly silent about the sixteen miles of water
pipes that facilitated the work of the Buffalo fire companies. 44 While
the city s expenditures in this field rose from an average of $3853
during the late thirties to $5836 during the late forties, the fire losses
increased much more rapidly. 45 The five fire alarms sounded one April
day in 1846 provided unusual excitement, but the big Main Street fire
of 1849, which destroyed an entire block on the north side between
St. x Paul and Clinton streets, was the largest fire to date, inciting much
criticism. One editor noted that Boston, four times the size of Rochester,
suffered fire losses that September barely 5 per cent as great as those of
Rochester chiefly because of Boston s efficient water works. 46

Reluctance to face the real issue continued, as most property owners
seemed ready to take their chances with the fire hazard rather than pay
the taxes necessary for a water system. When, however, the losses in
creased, reaching most of the leaders, resentment flared against suspected
fire bugs and those who sounded false alarms so frequently that the
efficiency of the fire companies was impaired. 47 Though rewards were

^Democrat, May 25, 1839; Advertiser, Aug. 20, Nov. 5, 1841; Sept. 22, 1843.

40 Rochester Daily Sun, July 10, 1839; Democrat, Jan. 31, 1842; C. C. Proc.,
July 3, 1845; "Reminiscences of J. L. H. Hosier," Union and Advertiser, Feb. 12,
1884.

**- Ever Ready Neptune Bucket Co. No. i Minute Book, 1837-1839, MS, Roch.
Hist. Soc.; Advertiser, Feb. 3, 1842.

^Democrat, Jan. 2, 17, 1843-

^Democrat, Aug. 5, 1834; Advertiser, Dec. 14, 1842; June 18, 1847.

^Advertiser, June 29, 1843; Lamed, History of Buffalo, I, 156-159*

45 Gilbert, Government and Finances, pp. 81-82, Table II-i,

46 Advertiser, Apr. 13, 1846; Sept. 28, 29, Oct. 4, 5, 1849.

47 Advertiser, May 12, 1840.

252 THE WATER-POWER CITY

offered for the detection of such offenders and other precautions re-
doubled, the results proved discouraging. By the mid-century the hungry
flames had consumed the congested Dublin Castle, Ann Street tenement,
and other dilapidated rookeries hastily erected during the boom twenties,
as well as many more reputable establishments, including the historic
Mansion House and St. Paul s Episcopal Church, the most elegant in the

city. 48

DIVIDED RESPONSIBILITY

As responsibility for a wide variety of civic functions was loosely
distributed between city, county, and state authorities, many services
were neglected, or poorly performed, or left to charitable agencies.
Public health gained little attention until near the close of the period;
the poor and the unfortunate received occasional but indifferent assist
ance; only the handling of lawbreakers displayed decision. The prob-
* lems in each case were becoming more complex and insistent, with urban
rather than village solution foreshadowed, though the increased desire
for economy delayed their realization.

After the close of its boom days, Rochester was generally able to take
pride in the good order and restraint of its citizens. Under the terms of
the first city charter, three regular night watchmen, a captain of the
watch, and five constables sufficed to guard the city, particularly the
lamp and watch district. The night watchmen soon increased to seven,
arousing the protests of economy advocates, though the value of a
prompt report of fires was appreciated. 49 Each watchman, provided
with a special hat, symbol of his authority, received a modest allowance,
while the constables kept the fees collected in their capacity as petty
court officers. With the city s growth these police services expanded,
prompting a transfer of their supervision to the mayor in i847. 5a The
cost increased from $451 in 1834 to $3,953 fifteen years later, though
Rochester had by that date only one full-time watchman on day duty. 51

The city s changing character appeared in its police records. Convic
tions for criminal offenses in Monroe County increased in number from
slightly over forty each year in the early thirties to one hundred by the
mid-century. The county exceeded its "mean or true proportion" of con
victions over a period of years in the thirties, rivalling New York and
Albany for the unwanted distinction of possessing the highest criminal
ratio in the state. Assault and battery proved tbe most frequent charge,

48 Advertiser, July 17, 1845; Democrat, July 3, 1845; Aug. 21, 1846; Rock.
Republican, May 5, 1844; July 27, 1847.

49 Rock. Republican, Mar. 6, 1836; Democrat, June 28, 1837.

50 Ordinances of the City of Rochester and Amendments to the City Charter
(Rochester, 1848), pp. 129-131.

51 Gilbert, Table EL

CIVIC AND INSTITUTIONAL AFFAIRS 253

but less violent social offenses, as keeping a bawdy house or selling
liquor without a license, accounted for an increased number of con
victions/ 2

The Watch Books were filled with the records of petty offenders. As
the number of questionable strangers requiring the surveillance of the
guard now regularly increased during the summer months, it no longer
seemed possible to depend on volunteer watchmen at that season. Thus
the thirty-odd arrests during the winter months in the late thirties
doubled with the return of warm weather. These numbers rose as the
forties advanced, despite the more favorable times 3 but the increase was
not so rapid as the city s growth, and an actual drop occurred in the
number of vagrants confined in jail overnight for the want of a home. 58
Those booked on charges of drunkenness not listed as an offense in the
thirties exceeded all others a decade later, suggesting that many of
the shiftless misfits, who in earlier days had sometimes moved on
toward the not too distant frontier, were by the mid-century acclimating
themselves after a fashion to urban life.

The county jail, now completely surrounded by the city, was forced to
expand in order to accommodate its inmates, 728 of whom were com
mitted in 1849 as against 435 five years before. Fortunately, from the
housing viewpoint, the terms were short, for the jail cells numbered sixty,
with seven rooms for females and special cases, though double these
numbers were frequently confined, 54 A rock pile within the jaU yard and
road repair in the vicinity supplied labor for the convicts, while the
services of a chaplain and a physician were occasionally provided. 55 One
observer in 1838 praised the cleanliness and discipline found in the
Rochester jail and commended the plan for an inmates library, but
the jail s most famous prisoner, William Lyon Mackenzie, leader of
the Canadian Rebellion, blasted petulantly against the damp marshy
surroundings and intolerable restraints of what he dignified as the
American Bastille, 56

52 , Senate Doc. (1838), No. 65; (1848), No. 193; (1850), No. 195. Of 63 con
victions in 1834, only 2 kept a bawdy house, while in 1847 that charge accounted
for 12 out of 72, and in 1849, 6 out of 101, with 17 committed for selling liquor
without a license at the latter date.

53 Watch Books (1836-1838), MSS in Roch. Hist. Soc.; Democrat, Aug. 10,
1839; Oct. 27, 1841; Apr. 18, 1845; Apr. 7, 1848.

M Advertiser, Sept 30, 1844; Jan. 20, 1849; Jan. 9, 1850; Roch. Republican,
Jan. 25, 1849; Monroe County Board of Supervisors, Proceedings: 1821-1840
(Rochester, 1892), p. 16$.

^Monroe County Board of Supervisors, Proceedings: 1821-1840, pp. 129, 141,
192, 214-215, 248, 260, 279, 295.

56 William Wood to Henry O Reilly, Canandaigua, Jan. 14, 1840; William L.
Mackenzie to Henry O Reilly, Rochester Jail, 9 letters, O Reilly Doc., Roch. Hist.
Soc.; Charles Lindsay, The Life and Times of WUUam L. Mackenzie (Toronto,
1862), quoted in Samson Scrapbook, No. 51, p. 72; Democrat, Dec. 28, 1843.

254 THE WATER-POWER CITY

Despite the obvious exaggeration In Mackenzie s complaints, the jail
house scarcely answered the needs of the increasing number of home-
boys gathered in by the officers. Agitation for a correctional institu
tion to care for these lads prompted the state in 1849 to open the
Western House of refuge, the fourth institution of its kind in the country ?
on Rochester s northwestern outskirts. 57

A grand Jury found it necessary in 1839 to recommend special ceEs
for the segregation of women in the jail. 58 Occasionally a woman was
committed on a charge of thievery, but more frequently the watch
would bring in one "Jane Van Buren, 3 "Cornelia Sherman," or some
other Negro or white lass puHed out of bed with a nameless male who
generally escaped into the night. Repeated attempts were made to dose
"Mrs. Brown s" or "Mrs. Smith s" disorderly house. Between 10 and
20 per cent of all local arrests involved women, one of them being
found in the street in man s clothing and another "having a red face." **
Efforts to curb the activities of these wayward women continued with
little success throughout the period, and not until the mid-century was
a Home for the Friendless provided by charitable folk desiring to
meliorate the situation. 60

Meanwhile, two sensational crimes stirred the community to its
depths. The first murder occurred in October, 1837, when William
Lyman, treasurer of the Carthage Railroad, was robbed and killed,
apparently by eighteen-year-old Octavius Barron, who was quickly
apprehended, tried amidst great excitement, and finally hanged in the
jail yard. 61 A second murder took place in the city before Barron s execu
tion, several others were reported during the forties, 62 occasional jail-
breaks were effected, and two minor riots developed, 63 but none of these
events roused the excitement produced by the alleged seduction of a
sixteen-year-old girl by her pastor. Popular discussion of the flimsy
evidence failed to subside, even after the conviction of the accused,
while testimonials prepared by both sides for the Bishop kept the case
before the public for several months. 64

w Western House of Refuge, First Annual Report (Albany, 1850).
K Rock. RepubKcan, Aug. 28, 1838; Sun, July i, 1839.

59 Watch Books, 1838.

60 Seventh Ann. Rept. of the Rochester Home for the Friendless (Rochester,
1856).

91 Rock. Republican, Oct. 31, 1837; June 12, 1838; William F. Peck, History
of the PoHce Department of Rochester, N. Y. (Rochester, 1903), pp. 72-78.

^Democrat, Apr. 16, 1842; Mar. 16, 1847; Roch. Republican, Apr. 4, 1848;
Advertiser, Aug. 25, 1848.

** Democrat, Jan. 4, 1844; Advertiser, June 10, 1846; Roch. RepubHcan, Oct.
5, 1847-

^The Volunteer, July 24, 1841; Democrat, July 24, Dec. 31, 1841; Jan. 19,
1842; Roch. RepubKcan, July 27, Sept. 21, 1841; Oct. 10, 1843; Elisabeth S. S.
Eaton to her husband, Rochester, Dec. 31, -1841; Jan. 19, 1842, E. S. S. Eaton
Letters, courtesy of Mrs. Elizabeth Selden Rogers, New York City.

CIVIC AND INSTITUTIONAL AFFAIRS 255

A more serious problem was that of the poor folk forced to beg for
bread during the dark years of the depression. As forthright action ap
peared necessary, plans were drawn for a workhouse where the "indolent
poor," as they were described^ could receive correctional treatment.
Bonds sold to finance the institution enabled purchase of a lot, but
nothing further was accomplished, 65 Meanwhile, when the aid given
through public work projects in the early years of the depression was
shut off by the economy drive, resort was made to direct relief pay
ments, which never fell below $5,000 a year during the forties and
mounted slowly to $13,420 by the close of the decade. 68 The overseers
of the poor, who distributed this fund, generally in the form of outdoor
relief , faced constant attack both from humanitarians and from economy
advocates. 67 Though the sums were modest enough, neither viewpoint
predominated; thus the per capita cost of city relief rose from 24 cents
in 1834 to 37 cents in 1837, falling to 27 cents in 1846, yet by the mid-
century, chiely because of the hardships resulting from the cholera
epidemic, the cost had turned upward again. 68

Despite its many flaws, the county almsfaouse located in Brighton,
a mile south of the city, provided a measure of relief. After an abortive
movement in the late thirties to sell the old site and develop a new
institution, several additions were built to accommodate the overcrowded
population. 69 A succession of fires in 1842 and 1846 not only cost several
lives but also greatly increased the congestion in the remaining quarters
until the rebuilding operations were completed. 70 Cholera reaped a rich
harvest among the inmates in 1849. Yet th fi institution continued to
operate throughout the period, and in 1847 its officers reported one
marriage, 18 births, and 75 deaths among the 1,178 enrolled during
the year. 71 Though provisions raised on the farm helped to keep down
the expenses of the large family, which averaged over two hundred a
day, a total of $13,017.80 was expended for maintenance that year,
showing a 20 per cent increase over 1846, occasioned chiefly, it was
explained, by the larger number of immigrants requiring assistance. 72

The most successful institution established during the period was the
Rochester Orphan Asylum. Leadership came from a group of charitable
women who opened a temporary asylum on April i, 1837, in a small
house on Sophia Street, starting with nine children transferred from

^Papers on the Workhouse (1838), MSS, Roch. Hist. Soe; Democrat, July 14,
Sept. 24, 25, 1839.

66 Gilbert, Tables II and HC.

67 C. C. Proc., Oct. 10, 1843; Democrat, May 16, 1845.

68 Gilbert, pp. 88-93-

69 Democrat, Mar. 20, Dec. 3, 23, 1836; Jan. 14, 1841.

70 Roch. Republican, Feb. 22, 1842; Democrat, Mar. 2, 1846; July 30, 31,
1849; Supervisprs, Proceedings: 1821-1840, p. 261.

71 Roch. Republican, Feb. 8, 1848; Advertiser, Jan. 12, 1849, Jan. n, 1850.

72 Advertiser, Dec. 3, 1847; Supervisors, Proceedings: 1821-1849, p. 355.

256 THE WATER-POWER CITY

the almshouse. Soon a charter was secured and larger quarters ? accom
modating some thirty youngsters, were occupied in CornhilL The gift of
a more favorable site in the southern part of the city spurred a drive
for funds, and after much earnest labor, particularly by the wives of
Chester Dewey and Thomas H. Rochester, a new home facing Hubbell
Park stood ready for its young occupants early in i844. 73 While this
institution was beginning its long and useful career, supported largely
by charitable Protestants, local Catholics were busy raising funds for
the Rochester Catholic Asylum for girls back of St. Patrick s Church.
The asylum opened in 1842, and three years later the Sisters of Charity
arrived from Emmetsburg, Maryland, to take charge, supporting the
institution in part by annual fairs. 74 Rochester thus equipped itself
with two creditable orphan asylums before the mid-century.

Though occasional insane persons were lodged in the jail when they
became troublesome, or if destitute in the almshouse, for the most part
these unfortunates, as well as the deaf, dumb, and blind, depended
upon the care given by their family or church friends. The state pro
vided some relief in 1845 when the State Lunatic Asylum at Utica ad
mitted a limited number from each county on payment of the pre
scribed $20 annual fees. A similar provision for the reception of deaf,
dumb, and blind pupils at the New York Institution prompted Monroe
County to send five there in 1845 an d si x * Utica. But Rochester was
credited with thirty-five such folk by the State Census that year, when
the county totalled 140, and neither public charity nor medical science
was prepared to give them much attention. 75

<

In many respects the most neglected of community affairs was public
health. Only in times of emergency did the city become actively con
cerned, and then the measures adopted seldom proved effective. The
lack of a public water system remained a serious handicap, greatly
complicating the sanitary problem. No real progress could be hoped for
while the economy advocates were in the saddle.

Under the charter s health provision, small outlays were made to
combat a minor cholera epidemic in 1834, but the board soon became
inactive. A campaign to see that all cellars and outhouses were properly

73 Assembly Journal (1838), pp. 312, 708; J. M. Schermerhorn to Ms wife,
Rochester, Dec. 21, 1841, Oct. 24, 1843, Schermerhorn Letters, in possession of
Mrs. Rudolph Stanley-Brown, Washington, D. C., photostats, Roch. Pub. Library;
The Orphan s Souvenir (Rochester, 1843).

74 Margaret Frawley, "A History of Charitable Institutions in Rochester,** MS,
Roch. Hist Soc.; Democrat, Oct. 13, 1841; Mar. 18, Nov. 28, 1844; May 29, 1845;
Mar. 21, 1848.

T5 N. Y. State Census (1845); Supervisors, Proceedings: 1821-1840, pp. 310,
311, 314-

CIVIC AND INSTITUTIONAL AFFAIRS 257

limed started under Its authority in 1839* and several years later the
board s advice was sought on the regulations to be applied to slaughter
houses. 76 Yet only the news of the spread of cholera through Europe
in 1848 awakened the authorities in Rochester. The revitalized board
of health, directing hotels and lodging houses to report all sick travelers,
hastily made plans for a city hospital. 77 Warnings were sounded
against the numerous grog shops, and a drive started that fall was
renewed the next spring to clean up the gutters, drains, and canal basins,
as well as private cellars, wells, and cesspools. 78 Despite an epidemic of
dysentery the board rejoiced the next May to report a year of exception
ally good health/ 9 but June brought the first attack of the dread scourge.

As in 1832, Rochester was woefully unprepared to cope with a
serious epidemic. When the protests of neighbors against the location
of a city "hospital" in the Fif th Ward prompted its removal to the Eighth
Ward in the spring of 1849, residents in the latter area responded by
applying the torch. Though an award of $500 sought the identity of
the incendiary, repeated efforts to find another suitable building failed,
and the community was fortunate at the last moment to secure a
temporary shelter for its first cholera victims some distance north of the
town overlooking the gorge. There, many hoped, the lake breezes would
dilute the dangerous cholera vapors. 80

For some reason the first onslaught of the plague early in June
slackened toward the close of the month. Renewed confidence stimulated
protests against the official cancellation of the customary celebration of
the Fourth, but when the fatalities multiplied in July and August,
popular indifference disappeared, causing many to flee the city. 81 The
sale of fresh fruit and vegetables was prohibited, and frantic complaints
indicted the several disreputable shanties and rookeries where the in
habitants appeared to die like flies. The torch was put to Brown s Block
on Main Street soon after five died there in six days, while the board of
health found the tenements of the Shamrock House on Market Street
"so foul in every part as to be unfit for the habitation of human beings.

Democrat, Apr. 9, 1835; Jan. 4, 1837; July 3, 6, 1839; Rock. Republican,
June 18, 1839; Advertiser, July 21, 1845.

77 Advertiser, Jan, 29, Apr. 25, Dec. 12, 1848. Public health boards elsewhere
likewise depended upon recurrent epidemics for popular support; see FairHe,
Municipal Administration, pp. 157-158.

78 Advertiser, Dec. 12, 1848, May 31, June i, 1849.

79 Democrat, May 22, June 8, 1849; Raymond Scrapbook, pp. 179-^180, 228-229.

80 Democrat, Apr. 30, 1834; Apr. 18, 27, 1848; July 13, 21, 1849; Jan. 10,
1850; Advertiser, Apr. 25, 1848; June 8, 15, 27, July 13, 1849; Betsey C. Comer,
"A Century of Medicine in Rochester," R. H. S., Pub., XIII, 358-359-

S1 Alfred G. Mudge to Lewis Selye, Rochester, June-September, 1849, MSS,
Autograph Collection, Roch. Hist. Soc.; Advertiser, June 8, 20, July 18, 1849.

258 THE WATER-POWER CITY

. * . He is that any of the wretched group escaped." 82 The

of deaths attributed to the plague (Including twenty-four
was 1 6 1, the great majority of them Irish and German im
migrants crowded together in unsanitary hovels. Yet one of the victims^
Dr. Wilson D. Fish, fell in the course of professional duty, and a suf
ficient number of fatalities occurred throughout the city to make the
epidemic a terrifying ordeal to the 35,000 inhabitants. 84

In face of this emergency the city fathers hastily loosened the purse
strings. Following an expenditure of $85 on public health in 1843, the
economy-minded community had avoided further outlays of that sort
until 18485 when $465 was expended. The next year saw the outlay in
creased tenfold; with most of the $5095 going into the makeshift hospital
where transient and other destitute cholera victims received free treat
ment. Nevertheless, soon after the last case had cleared up and the
arrival of cold weather dispelled fear of the plague s renewal, the
hospital closed and the community slipped back into its more comfortable
disregard of sanitary ordinances. 85

If a spirit of lassitude characterized many of its servkes 3 the city at
least achieved a remarkable record of economy. The policy first gained
effect in 1840, when the total outlays were cut from $109,788 to $56,768
a 50 per cent economy per person. As the public services could not
accommodate themselves to such a drastic reduction, a steady though
moderate rise brought the outlay up to $86,845 by 1844. Democratic
Mayor Isaac Hills declared in 1843 ^ at "there is but one view on this
subject, that this community cannot sustain the weight of taxation," yet
his own outlays brought a new increase.* 6 Local Whigs, abandoning
their policy of internal improvements, sought to outdo the economy
Democrats, and under their auspices during the late forties, despite
moderate advances in the total outlays, the per capita expenditures
were brought down to $2.66 by 1849, well below the $3.42 of 1844 and
less than half the $5.80 of iS^g. 87

A growing proportion of the outlays came from regular tax sources,
and while these appeared to bear with increasing weight upon local
property, the hardship was not so great as the figures implied. The tax
rate per $1,000 in 1835 was $4.58, mounting gradually to $10.24 by
1849, while the local assessment rate fell during the same period from
$8.6 1 to $2. 63 . 8S But these figures reveal only half the story, since the

** Advertiser, Aug. 30, Sept. 15, 1849; Jan. 5, 1850; Raymond Scraphook, pp.
173, 228-229.

^Democrat, Dec. 12, 1849.

94 Advertiser, Aug. 28, 1849; Jan- 5> 1850; Democrat, Dec. 12, 1849.

** Democrat, Mar. 19, 1850; Advertiser, Oct. 4, 1850; Gilbert, Table H

88 C. C. Pr&c., Mar. 10, 1843; Gilbert, pp. 109-112, 114-118, 153-156.

87 Democrat, Jan. 22, 30, 1844; Gilbert, Table I.

88 Gilbert, Table IX.

CIVIC AND INSTITUTIONAL AFFAIRS 259

inefficient work of the fifteen assessors, chosen annually with few
reflections, had practically stabilized Rochester s assessed valuation
throughout the period. After the rise from $3,010,000 to 14,432,000 be
tween 1835 &d 1840, the assessed valuation advanced slowly to $5,073,-
000 by 1850 an increase of 70 per cent during the fifteen years, as
compared with a population growth more than twice as large. That some
thing was awry with the standards of the assessors appeared the very
next year, when the valuation suddenly doubled. 88

The economy advocates likewise achieved a sharp reduction of the
municipal debt. The great activity of the late thirties had accumulated a
net debt of $126,339 by 1839, or $6.68 per capita. By dint of rigid
economy and a generally increased tax levy, this debt was reduced to
$123,538 or $5.14 per capita in 1843, when Rochester was accredited
with the second lowest per capita debt among the seventeen principal
cities of the Union. As the retrenchment program had then barely
started, further economies cut the debt to $66,676 in 1850, or $1.83
per capita. 90

Only a polite disregard of the taxing restraints imposed by the charter
made this achievement possible. Though added revenue sources appeared
from time to time, the annually increased tax levies showed little rela
tion to the charter provisions; indeed, at no time did the latter approach
the sums collected. The $20,000 limit under the 1844 charter advanced
by varied amendments to $28,000 in 1849, and by a new charter in 1850
to $35,000, yet the tax levies for these years were $33,000, and $50,880,
and $70,063 respectively. 91 These levies did not, however, include the
miscellaneous taxes, whose gross declined sharply, chiefly because of
reduced activity in the field of public improvements. As a result the
per capita tax showed a slight rise, while the per capita local assess
ments trended in the opposite direction sufficiently to stabilize the
burden. 92

Never again would the dream of the budget-balancers be so closely
approximated as at the mid-century. The city fathers were still content
to draw their water from shallow, backyard wells, sending their house
keepers out to sweep the gravel streets, and their sons to fight the re
current fires with gasping hand pumps. Some doubts appeared con
cerning the adequacy of these provisions, especially after the destruc
tion wrought by the successive fires and epidemics of the late forties.
The city of Troy, frequently praised in Rochester for the enterprise

89 Gilbert, Table I; Democrat, Jan. 9, -1841; Feb. 19, 1845.

90 Leroy A. Shattuck, Municipal Indebtedness (Baltimore, 1940) , p. 15, quoting
from the U. S. Magazine and Democratic Review, XII (1843), 212; Gilbert,
Table XI.

51 Weller, "Development of the Charter," pp. 77-78, 83-84; Gilbert, Table VIH.
** Gilbert, Table DC.

2&0 WATER-POWER CITY

of its ventured to pile up a debt nearly ten times that of

the Flour City without checking the courage of Its smaller population,
was past Rochester in municipal improvements as

m so many other respects at the mid-century. 1 * 3 The need for a new
policy in Rochester appeared only too evident, yet it was most fre
quently argued that the real negligence resided in the county and state
authorities. Quite unjustly the quaint little courthouse served as the
chief butt for local critics. 94

^

As a matter of fact, despite the additional functions assumed by the
city, the county remained the big brother in local government. Re
sponsibility for the city streets and schools was readily surrendered by
the county authorities; who found the administration of those affairs in
the remaining towns sufficiently burdensome. Indeed, the supervisors
would gladly have surrendered other responsibilities as well, notably
that of building and repairing the numerous bridges, for each town had
its pet bridge project, though none wished to be taxed for that of its
neighbor. The debate over the reconstruction of the main bridge at
Rochester became so protracted that the city finally, in 1837, proceeded
with the task itself. The supervisors, who ultimately paid most of this
bill, assisted with frequent repairs of that bridge as well as those at
Court and Clarissa streets and at Carthage, yet on each occasion the
initiative had to be assumed by the city. 95

The jealousies which naturally developed between the various towns
over the location of a road, a bridge, or an institution flared into the
open at the semi-annual and special meetings of the supervisors. The
representation of the city, because of its more rapid growth, increased
from three to five during the mid-thirties, but later demands for
additional supervisors were resisted by the towns, fearful lest the city,
which numbered three-eighths of the county s population by the mid-
century, would dominate the board. There was, however, little prospect
of such domination at the time, for not only were the five Rochester
supervisors easily outvoted by the eighteen country members, but also
the ablest leadership generally came from the latter group chiefly, no
doubt, because of the frequency with which many townsmen sought
and secured reelection, in contrast to the rotation of office practiced
in Rochester. The city, fortunately, derived some benefit from the situa
tion, for several of these officials were drawn more closely into
Rochester s affairs by their frequent visits on county business, some
ultimately making it their residence the most notable example being

<

^Arthur J, Weise, Troy s One Hundred Years (Troy, 1891), p. 345; Lamed,
History of Buffalo, passim.

** Democrat, May 15, 1841; Dec. 13, 1849; Aug. i, 1850.

95 Supervisors, Proceedings: 1821-1840, pp. 129, 146, 148, 159, 164, 166-167, 194.

CIVIC AND INSTITUTIONAL AFFAIRS 261

the removal of Hiram SIbley from West Mendon to Rochester after a
brief term in the mid-forties as county sheriff. 96

The growing jealousy between the city and the surrounding towns was
accentuated by the popular demand for economy. Though the first two
decades witnessed a steady advance in the assessment valuations of the
several towns, until the county s total reached $15,661,769 in 1841, each
of the next half-dozen years saw a reduction in the figure reported by
practically every town and the city wards as well. By the mid-century
the total valuation fell more than $2,000,000 below that of a decade
previous. 91 " As landowners displaced land promoters in positions of
authority, the county as well as the city attempted to retrench. Perhaps
it was only a coincidence that Nathaniel T. Rochester, having long since
returned from Ms dashing European excursion of the early thirties, was
now writing out his full middle name, Thrift, when signing official re
ports in his capacity as Clerk of the Board of Supervisors, a position
he held throughout the forties.

The increasing volume of official business presented a serious problem.
Though both plans were suggested, neither splitting the county in two
with the river as a dividing line nor making the city an independent
county offered a prospect of efficiency or economy. 98 It was found
expedient, however, to divide the county into two districts for school
supervision and into three assembly districts for polling purposes." An
early demand for a new courthouse, prompted by the inadequacy of the
existing structure, was put off when various outside accommodations
became available. Thus, the county in 1835 acquired possession of
Dr. Elwood s small building, located on one corner of the courthouse
plot, and twelve years later took over the similar building of Vincent
Mathews on the other corner; 1<M> yet these additions and the construc
tion of a fireproof clerk s office in 1836 only deferred the day when a
new courthouse would be a positive requirement. As the forties drew to
a close the supervisors were forced to take action. The first plan called
for a modest structure to cost only $30,000, but popular indignation at
such short-sighted economy soon prompted a revision of plans, and by
the mid-century a quite substantial courthouse, surmounted by a dome,
was in process of erection on the old site. 101

96 Supervisors, Proceedings: 1821-1849, passim; Hiram W. Sibley, "Memories of
Hiram Sibley, 7 R. H. S., Pub., II, 127-134-

^Supervisors, Proceedings: 1821-1849, pp. 248, 395, passim. The city s assess
ment total was not reduced, but the slow advance was in effect a reduction when
the increased area and population were considered; see above, p. 259.

98 Supervisors, Proceedings: 1821-1849, pp. 279, 281-282; Advertiser, Oct. 17,

1843; Dec. u, 1845.

99 Supervisors, Proceedings: 1821-1849, .p. 275; Advertiser, Nov. 21, 1845.

100 Supervisors, Proceedings: 1821-1849, pp. 141* 142, 37&

101 Supervisors, Proceedings: 1821-1849, p. 163; Democrat, May 15, 1841; Dec.
13, 1849; Aug. i, 1850; Advertiser, Mar. 28, 1850.

262 THE WATER-POWER CITY

No the most distinguished public leadership was that provided

by a group of able judges who presided over the community s legal
Three Democrats, Samuel L. Selden, Ashley Samson, and Patrick
Bucban, served successively as First Judge of the County Court during
the thirties and forties, and while the rapid increase in litigation fre
quently congested their dockets, the Community enjoyed the benefit of
their even-handed justice. 102 Appeals were nevertheless increasingly
numerous, and thanks to Thurlow Weed s early friendship, the able
Democrat, Addison Gardiner, served as a Rochester representative in
t}ie Eighth District of the State Circuit Court during most of the
thirties. When the pressure of increased business compelled the appoint
ment of a vice-chancellor for this growing district in 1839, ^ e leading
Whigs Frederick Whittlesey, secured the appointment, holding it until
the constitutional revision of 1846. Under the new arrangement, which
transferred Monroe County to the Seventh District, Samuel L. Selden was
elected as the Rochester member of its four-man panel. Addison Gardiner
was at the same time elected to the state s highest tribunal, the Court
of Appeals, where he served with ability until i8s6. 103

Hie long terms of these judicial officers were matched by few other
officials during the period, the district attorney and the county treasurer
being noteworthy exceptions. The election of Lewis Selye to the latter
office in 1847 brought into the county service an able executive, who
soon placed its financial affairs on a sound basis. With an effort to
coEect back taxes, renewed after a long lapse during the depression
years, 104 the county girded itself for a more vigorous performance of its
functions in the years ahead.

There was an incentive other than glory to attract able men into local
t office, since the fees frequently added up to handsome sums. Thus the
clerk of the chancery court in 1837 averaged ten dollars on each of the
99 bills recorded that September and calculated upon an income of
$6ooo. 105 In the case of the judges, whose position redounded to their
reputation as lawyers, a direct advantage was likewise evident. When
in 1847 an effort to place such essential posts as that of the district at
torney, the county clerk, and the judges on a regular salary basis
raised the salary of the First Judge from $500 to $1500, an outburst of

ia2 Advertiser, Nov. 22, 1843; I^ ec - 9> 1848; Raymond Scrapbook, p. 24; Judge
P. G. Buchan, "Memoirs and Sundry Writings," Buchan Scrapbook; Samson Note*
Book, X, 5S9-36o.

103 Peck, Semi-Centenmdl History of Rochester, pp. 366-377 ; Addison Gardiner:
In Memorwm (Rochester, 1883).

104 Democrat, Oct. 26, 1848.

105 Elisabeth S. S. Eaton to her husband, Rochester, Nov. 17, 1837, Jan. 19,
1842, E. S. S. Eaton Letters. "Judge" Selden s private law practice, which oc
cupied but part of his attention in 1841, netted him $1200 for the year.

CIVIC AND INSTITUTIONAL AFFAIRS 263

criticism brought the figure down to $1000, considered more in line with
the standards of a democratic community . aos

Only when an ambitious man saw an opportunity to build up a
political following through the retention of office was an effort made
to break down the tradition of rotation. This situation developed in the
post office at an early date, as the successive incumbents played an active
part in local politics, each seeking to block the campaign that soon
developed for Ms removal. Yet the potentialities of this and similar
Federal posts for political influence were small, and although the local
Democratic minority was doubtless strengthened by control of the post
office for twelve out of sixteen years during the period, the volume of
patronage proved meager indeed. Local judgeships likewise fell for the
most part to Democrats, but this had the effect of removing some of
the party s ablest leaders from political activity. The direction of Whig
forces by Thurlow Weed from distant Albany received support locally
from Frederick Whittlesey, though both were chiefly concerned with
state and national politics. It was not until the mid-forties, when Lewis
Selye emerged as the guiding spirit in local Whig circles, that the com
munity began to enjoy a measure of the leadership lacking since the
death or withdrawal of the early village fathers. 107

PUBLIC AND PRIVATE EDUCATIONAL ADVANCES

Education was the civic field in which Rochester made its most
creditable advance during the period. The county gradually surrendered
full control to the city, and the latter, spurred by emerging democratic
forces, achieved real progress in the development of a public school
system during the mid-forties. Moreover, the community enjoyed the
services of several private academies. The enterprise of a few able edu
cators, generously backed by interested citizens, not only provided the
youth of the city with advantages comparable to those of other cities,
but also helped to supply facilities for the edification of adults in line
with nation-wide trends at the mid-century. 108

Yet these achievements must have seemed far in the future to the
small group of public-spirited citizens who advocated educational re
forms in lie mid-thirties. Dissatisfaction with the old district school
system had been one of the arguments for a city charter, 109 and that docu
ment gave a measure of control over the districts to the common council.
Nevertheless, that body, preoccupied with other affairs, found little

^ Assembly Doc. (1840), No. 21; Supervisors, Proceedings: i82i-i84g, p. 344.
1<n "See the numerous letters to Lewis Selye scattered through the Autograph
Collection, MSS, Roch. Hist. Soc.

108 Sidney L. Jackson, America s Struggle for Free Schools (Washington, 1941).

109 Democrat, Feh. 19, 1834.

264 THE WATER-POWER CITY

for Its duties. Though five school Inspectors were ap-

polntedj the district trustees remained directly responsible for each
It was only at their request that the council occasionally
levied an extra tax for repairs or for a new building. Indeed, the council
itself, lacking the power to levy a general school tax, could only recom
mend to the county supervisors the sums desired sums usually calcu-

just to match the state funds. 110

Occasionally a district mustered courage to attack Its own problems.
Thus old Gates District No. 2 7 now renamed Rochester No. i, responsible
for the most densely populated area of the city, renewed earlier efforts
to secure a new building. As a major reason for delay had been the fear
that a later revision of the district boundaries would deprive many
property holders of their investment in the school, a bill was introduced
at Albany to obviate tMs danger. 111 Finally in May, 1835, despite the
defeat of its bill, the district voted to proceed with the construction of a
stone schoolhouse at a cost of $3000 on the old site facing the Court
House. Hie two-story building stood ready the next year, but its four
roomSj though the most spacious In the city, soon proved inadequate.
The council, however, rejected the district s request In 1838 for a $2500
special assessment to build an addition in the rear for the use of the
girls, granting instead an extra $200 for maintenance. 112

Though none of the other twelve districts formulated such ambitious
plans, similar difficulties obstructed each attempted reform, thus giving
rise to a determined campaign for a revision of the entire system. A Com
mittee for Elevating the Standards of Common School Education,
organized at a public meeting in September, 1836, delegated A. C. Pratt,
local author of popular lyrics, to study the problem and agitate for
improvements throughout the county .^ Spurred to action, the super
visors created a County Board of School Visitors, naming Dr. White-
house, rector of St. Luke s, as chairman and Henry O Reilly as vice
chairman. 314 Correspondence with educational reformers in the East and
an exhaustive study of the local situation laid the groundwork for a suc
cession of public meetings at the Court House late in i838. 115 With
Dr. Maltby Strong, a public spirited physician, presiding, Dr. White-

no Supervisors, Proceedings: 1821-1849, p. 202.

311 Assembly Doc. (1835), No, 117.

122 Gates District No. 2, Minute Book, May u, 1835; May, 1838; May, 1840;
MS, Roch. Hist. Soc.

***Rock. Republican, Nov. 15, 1836; Democrat, Dec. 6, 1836; Jan. 4, 1837.

*** O Reilly Doc., No. 2289-2290.

<m Jackson, Free Schools. The voluminous notations and bibliography which
crowd the last hundred pages of this volume attest the ramifications of the move
ment for free schools throughout the Northeast. The struggle in Rochester, com
plex as it was, seems to have been much simpler in character than that depicted
here for New York and New England.

CIVIC AND INSTITUTIONAL AFFAIRS 265

house read the committee s report, recommending the creation of an
independent board of education with power to appoint a superintendent,
who in turn should be responsible for the selection of teachers and the
general administration of all schools. The support of all common schools
on a free basis by a city-wide tax and the purchase of a supply of school
books recommended by the American Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge were likewise proposed.

There could be no doubt that the situation demanded drastic action.
Of the 4064 children In the city between the ages of five and sixteen, the
committee found only 1569 registered in the district schools. Another
1362 were cared for in the numerous select schools and those maintained
by charity, yet more than one thousand attended no school whatever,
and many of the enrollees attended irregularly, or for very short terms.
The report likewise endorsed public aid for the advanced Instruction of
able but poor youths. While this last recommendation after a heated
debate was voted down, the major portion of the report was enthusi
astically adopted. 11

As It required more than the approval of a citizens meeting to put
these reforms Into effect, an enlarged committee, comprising three mem
bers from each ward, was created to urge the program upon the au
thorities. Additional men of ability Ashbel W. Rlley, James Seymour,
Selah Mathews, and Frederick Starr among others were thus drawn
into the campaign. A series of letters signed "Y. Z." urged the reform
in the press. 317 Although the economic hardships suffered by the com
munity distracted attention in 1839, the agitation was continued by
Drs. Whitehotise and Strong. 1 " The school inspectors likewise recom
mended action, 119 and early in 1840 the campaign gained renewed vigor
when the newly established Workingman s Advocate took up the cause. 120
A second report, prepared for the committee by George Arnold, a local
banker, discovered a considerable waste of funds through the inefficiency
of the district schools, while the County Board of Visitors, led now by
James S. Wadsworth, recommended the appointment of a county school
superintendent and the maintenance of free schools throughout that
area. 121 Frequent sermons and public addresses rallied support. Op
ponents attacked the principle of taxing one man to educate the chil
dren of another, labelling it undemocratic, but arguments stressing the
community s need for an informed electorate proved more persuasive. 122

316 Rock. Republican, Oct. 9, 1838; Advertiser, Dec. 5, 1838.

117 Advertiser, Dec. 5, 6, 7, n, 15, 27, 1838.

118 Advertiser, Jan. 16, Nov. 7, 1839.

115 Advertiser, Mar. 21, 1839; Democrat, Sept. 7, 1:839.
120 Workmgman s Advocate, Feb. 5, 13, 15, 1840.
321 Democrat, Jan. T, 1841.

^Democrat, Jan, 23, Feb. 8, Nov. 4, 1840; Jan. 12, Feb. 13, 16, Nov. 22,
1840; Genesee Farmer, VIII (1838), 40.

266 THE WATER-POWER CITY

The relation between Ignorance and crime was emphasized by

(FRelly, likewise urged that free schools, in view of their success
in Providence and other Eastern communities, 128 could no longer be
considered an untried experiment

Finally in May, 1841, the le^slature passed an amendment to the
city charter providing for a board of education and a system of free,
tax-supported, common schools. Despite the last-minute attempt of the
city council to gain these powers for itself , an elective board was created
with two members to be chosen from each ward. The board was to name
the superintendent and to determine the funds needed, and as long as
these remained within six times the sum provided by the state, the
council was to levy the necessary tax. Any additional outlays would,
however, require approval of the council, which thus retained an effective
restraint over the program s expansion. 12 *

<

Rochester, with one of the pioneer free school systems, was closely
observed by educational reformers during the forties. The first board,
including men active in the campaign, as Henry O Reilly and Levi A.
Ward, promptly chose the latter as president and selected Isaac Mack,
a public spirited Whig and custom miller, as superintendent. 125 Two new
districts were organized, the construction of several new school build
ings was undertaken, and the enrollment more than doubled by I842. 128
Within three years, nine new buildings were erected at a total cost of
$28,000, the registration at the fifteen schoolhouses amounted to 4,246,
while forty-four teachers received an average of $257.47 in I844. 127
Hie program of studies included, in addition to the three R s, such sub
jects as algebra, history, geography, botany, grammar, geometry, book
keeping, and natural philosophy. Though an effort to equip school
libraries developed, the purchase of school books was left to the
parents. 12 Several unfortunate disciplinary cases attracted much at
tention, but the superintendent was more concerned over the irregularity
of attendance, which he felt indicated the failure of parents to give full
support to the experiment. 129

Despite their many flaws, the public schools of Rochester became
useful community centers by the mid-forties. A class in vocal music,
organized by a volunteer teacher, proved so well trained in 1846 that
a public recital prompted the board to appropriate $25 for this instruc-

Doc., No. 2290; Democrat, Dec. 30, 1840.
* M Democrat, June n, 1841.
328 Advertiser, July 9, 1841.
"^Democrat, Apr. u, June ai, 1842.

327 Democrat, June 30, 1843; Feb. 12, 1844; Advertiser, Apr. 12, 1844; Board
of Education, 2nd Annual Report (1844), appendix.

328 Bd. of Ed., 2nd Annual Report, pp. 10-12, 32.

129 Bd. of Ed., 2nd Annual Report, pp. 15-17,* Advertiser, June 7, 1844.

CIVIC AND INSTITUTIONAL AFFAIRS 267

tion, and soon two music teachers were engaged part-time. 130 Occasional
evening classes accommodated young mechanics whose circumstances
did not permit their attendance at the regular hours, but these facilities
never satisfied the needs of this group, estimated to number sixteen
hundred in i84i. lsl The schoolhouses supplied convenient meeting places
for newly organized religious societies, while the small library maintained
in each building was made available for community use on Saturday
mornings^ when each principal was required to serve as librarian. 112

The proper maintenance of these various structures demanded con
stant attention. Wood for the school stoves, previously received from
the parents, had to be purchased and cut at the order of the board,
though the teachers remained responsible for making their fires and
keeping the buildings properly swept and ventilated. While occasional
outlays for a new bell or for repairs of the white-washed school fences
or the teachers rostrums were required, the superintendent stoutly de
nied frequent charges that these expenditures represented an attempt to
maintain palatial structures. 133

Unfortunately the demand for economy, which obstructed so many
civic functions during the late forties, inevitably retarded the educa
tional advance. After the defeat in 1844 of Superintendent Mack s recom
mendation that a high school be established for the "talented and am
bitious youth of our city/ 7 long delays ensued before his successors were
able, near the mid-century, to organize creditable senior departments in
a few of the larger schools. 134 The board, answering the frequent demands
for economy with a denial that it had any plans for instruction in "the
abstract sciences" or "the dead languages," affirmed its belief that a
"knowledge of the simpler elements of the various common sciences"
would redound to "the great and permanent good of the entire com
monwealth." ^

Spurred by repeated attacks on the free school system during the late
forties, the board considered several proposed economies, such as the
abandonment of separate classes for girls and the separate school for
Negroes. In each case, however, the social problems involved aroused so
much discussion that action was delayed. 186 Instead, salaries were re
duced and other minor economies effected in a desperate effort to keep
the expanding school program within the limits of the less generous

130 Bd. of Ed., Proceedings, Aug. 2, 1847.

131 Bd. of Ed., Proceedings, Dec. 3, 1849; Democrat, June 21, 1841.

132 A. Laura McGregor, "The Early History of the Rochester Public Schools,"
R. H. S., Pub., XVH, 51-52 ; Democrat, Mar. 5, 1846.

133 McGregor, "Rochester Public Schools," 52-55.

184 Bd, of Ed., Proc. f Feb. 2, Dec. 7, 1846; Aug. 28, 1848.

135 Bd. of Ed., Proc., Sept. 7, 1846.

136 Bd, of Ed., Proc., Aug. 6, 1849; J* 31 - I 4j 1850; Democrat, Aug. 10, Sept. 7,
Nov. 10, 16, 20, 1849.

268 THE WATER-POWER CITY

appropriations of the late forties. Superintendent Belden R. Me Alpine
was able in 1847 to make the ironic boast that, among the eleven prin
cipal free-school cities, Rochester ranked fourth in the percentage of
children attending, first in the average number of pupils per teacher, and
last both in the average salaries and in the average cost per pupil. 1ST
Because of the continued growth of the city, the number of school
buildings had to be increased to eighteen by 1849, enrolling 5,655 pupils
for varied terms under the charge of fifty-two teachers. The funds avail
able that year totalled $16,620.30, or barely three dollars per pupil. 138
These figures represented an advance, however, over the extreme
economy of the previous four years, resulting in part, no doubt, from
the earnest agitation of the Monroe County Teachers 7 Association under
the leadership of Dr. Chester Dewey. 139 With the success in 1849 of the
campaign for free schools throughout the state, Rochester s pioneer
efforts in this field received legislative endorsement.

<

One persuasive argument against a tax-supported high school was the
group of private academies which vied with each other for the com
munity s favor during the forties. 140 Several of them, dating from the
thirties, had enjoyed a promising growth before the city school system
was successfully organized. Although private in character, they enlisted
the energies and loyalties of citizen sponsors, and fond traditions
strengthened their hold upon the community.

The most important of these academies was indeed almost a public
institution in spirit and activity. The Rochester Seminary, successor to
the ill-fated High School of 1827, though operated as an incorporated
academy under the control of a board of trustees, continued during
the thirties to provide primary instruction to the children of the two
districts which had erected the building. Evidence of the growing interest
of the community hi practical and scientific subjects appeared in 1836
when the classical-minded Reverend Gilbert Morgan, called to the
presidency of the Western University of Pennsylvania, 141 was replaced as
principal by Dr. Chester Dewey, a graduate of and for a time professor
at Williams College and one of the country s half-dozen pioneers in
physical and natural sciences. 142

13T Bd. of Ed., 6th Annual Report (1847), pp. 9-10.
138 Democrat, Mar. 9, 1850.

138 Democrat, Sept. 17, 18465 Feb. 23, 1848; Gilbert, "Government and Finances,"
Tables II, in, part 3, W, part i.

140 Advertiser, June 4, 13, 14, 16, 1845. It is interesting to note that Dr. Dewey
and several others interested in the academies as teachers or trustees favored a
public high school, while most of the opposition came from the economy-minded
political leaders.

141 Democrat, Aug. i, 1835.

142 Ethel McAllister, Amos Eaton: Scientist and Educator (Philadelphia, 1941),
pp. 173-174, passim.

CIVIC AND INSTITUTIONAL AFFAIRS 269

When the Seminary reorganized as the Rochester Collegiate Institute
in 1839, its ties with the school districts were completely severed/ 41
though a small juvenile department continued until 1842. With the ad
ditional space thus made available for laboratories, it was early dis
covered that the chemistry experiments should be held during the last
period of the day ? lest escaping odors or occasional accidents disturb the
other classes. Geological and botanical specimens, in which Dr. Dewey
took particular delight, were gathered in abundance from the gorge and
the nearby swamps, while the work of the biology class was greatly
facilitated in 1848 when a specially prepared eyeglass arrived for the
school s double microscope.

Dr. Dewey believed that learning could best be acquired through
analysis and demonstration, rather than by dull memory work. 144 One
observer noted with interest that the youthful orators at the public
examinations chose to deliver quotations from Adams, Clay, Webster,
and other contemporary figures, in place of Demosthenes, Cicero, or
Burke, popular in his own youth. 145 Not only the academic scholars,
averaging around 150 boys annually and paying from twenty to twenty-
five dollars in tuition, but the entire community as well profited from
the educational leadership of Dr. Dewey and the Collegiate Insti
tute. 146

The Institute met increasing competition in one field, as several
female seminaries gained a foothold in the city, and in 1841 the girls
department was abandoned. The first female seminary had been started
nearly a decade before by the Black sisters and Sarah Seward, three
graduates of Emma Willard s seminary in Troy. The ktter soon took
charge, moving the school in 1835 into a fine new building on Alexander
Street. 147 The choice residential quarter in the Third Ward, disturbed
over the removal of the seminary, gave an eager welcome to Julia Jones
and the Doolittle sisters, rallying to form a stock company which suc-

143 Democrat, Feb. 25, May i, 1839.

144 N. Y. Regents, Reports ( 1848), pp. 168-169; (1849), pp. 164-167.

145 Democrat, Apr, 22, 1845.

146 Blake McKelvey, "On the Educational Frontier," R. H. S., Pub., XVII, 27-
28; Charles W. Seelye, "A Memorial Sketch of Chester Dewey," Rochester
Academy of Science, III, 182-184; Dictionary of American Biography, V, 267-268;
Martin B. Anderson, Sketch of the Life of Chester Dewey (Albany, 1868).
Dewey s influence is happily revealed in a letter from Elisabeth Selden Spencer to
Captain Amos Eaton, Rochester, Dec. 8, 1837: "Prof. Dewey has commenced a
course of private Lectures on Geology, to a class of about twenty or more ladies,
married & unmarried, who meet every Saturday afternoon at Mrs KempshalPs
house, Aunt Susan, Eliza, & myself attend them, they are only just commenced.
... we intend to open your box of minerals and examine them." Elisabeth Selden
Spencer Eaton Letters.

147 Advertiser, Apr. u, 1832; Feb. 20, Mar. 19, 1833; Democrat ^ Mar. 27,
1834; Oct. 23, 1835.

270 THE WATER-POWER CITY

cessfuUy opened the Rochester Female Academy on Fitzhugh Street in
May ? i836. 148 Still a tMrd seminary was established during 1839 in
Dr. Lev! Ward s old home on St. Paul Street by Mary B. Allen, formerly
head of the girls 7 department in the High School. 14S

A friendly rivalry developed between these three schools, each
catering to girls between twelve and sixteen years of age but occasionally
admitting younger children. Miss Seward accommodated a few out-of-
town girls, charging $140 a year for board, room, and tuition. Regular
day pupils paid $8 or $10 each quarter, with extra charges for training
in such leisure arts as music and painting.

The program of studies varied to suit the convenience of the teachers
and their pupils, who averaged around a hundred at each school. The
class records kept by the Female Academy reveal that in 1839 twelve-
year-old Mary Buell studied Blake s Natural Philosophy for three
months, the first two volumes of Pierce s Universal History for six
months, Watts on the Mind for nine months, as well as six months of
French. The next year Mary continued her French, devoted three
months to Smith s Arithmetic, and six each to Smellies 7 Philosophy,
Burritt s Astronomy, Newman s Rhetoric, and the last two volumes of
Pierce s History. The third year was devoted to Davis 3 Algebra, Smith s
Physics, Lincoln s Botany, Robbins Universal History, and some more
French. Some of Mary s schoolmates read Wayland s Moral Philosophy,
Paley s Theology, Kane s Elementary Christianity, Alexander s Evi
dences of Christianity, Goodrich s United States History, among other
books. The work was carried on by individual rather than dass assign
ments, and apparently the subjects depended in part on the texts
available. 150

The spell cast over each school by its mistress usually proved the
dominating influence. Thus the diminutive Araminta Doolittle, noted
for her charming poise, endowed her girls with a polished dignity and
self-restraint that assured them absolute command in the drawing
room. 151 Miss Seward s and Miss Allen s girls proved equally recogniz
able, as the former s cheerful disposition indulged a "rather wild set,"
while the forthright piety of the latter, as interpreted by the girls of
the Seminary on Allen Street, where it located in 1844, played as sig
nificant a part in the emerging urban society as the decorum of the
Third Ward girls. 152

Republican, Feb. 13, 1838; Jane H. Nichols, Rochester Female
Academy: An Historical Sketch: 1837-1912 (Rochester, n.d.), pp. 6-12.

149 Mary B. Allen King, Looking Backward, pp. 168-188.

150 Rochester Female Academy, Class Books, 1837-1842, MS, Roch, Hist. Soc.

151 Alice L. Hopkins, A Reminiscence of Miss A. D. Doolittle and the Roches
ter Female Academy (Rochester, n.d.)> p. 5.

lffi *E. S. S. Eaton to her husband, Rochester, Dec. 29, 1837; Sarah C. Eaton
to K S. S. Eaton, Troy, Sept. 13, 1838; E. S. S. Eaton Letters; Roch. Republican,

CIVIC AND INSTITUTIONAL AFFAIRS 271

The younger sisters of these seminary gMs were accommodated in the
late thirties by "no less than a dozen (perhaps there are more) select
schools/ 7 as one observer noted, adding that "an educated young
woman needs only a suitable room and some apparatus, and then begins
operation at once." 15S Their tuition ranged between three and six
dollars each quarter, slightly above the charges at the district schools
before 1841, yet the feeling that a respectable miss would not receive
proper treatment in the common schools assured many of the select
schools annual enrollments of a dozen or so girls. A few advertised as
"infant schools," revealing the influence of Robert Owen s New Lanark
experiment 154 The Young Ladies Benevolent Society of St Luke s es
tablished a charity school for infants in 1833, while the school of the
Female Charitable Society gave increased attention to younger chil
dren. 155

Other church schools of the period foreshadowed a new parochial
trend. Three years after St. Joseph s Catholic Church provided a school
for its German children in 1836, the Irish at St. Patrick s followed suit,
while the German Lutheran and the second German Catholic churches
provided schools soon after their establishment. Supported for the
most part by the parishes benefitted, these schools compared with the
charity schools at St. Luke s and of the Charitable Society except in
the basic language and the brand of religion dispensed. Though the
arrival of the Sisters of Charity at the Catholic Orphan Asylum in 1845
marked a new beginning in Catholic education, the attempt to establish
a College of the Sacred Heart at Rochester in 1848 met failure, and no
further parochial developments occurred before the mid-century, 156

Meanwhile, the free school program of 1841 considerably reduced
the field of activity for charity and select schools alike. Not only did
the improved common schools with enlarged enrollments find it possible
to classify their pupils into departments, but in many cases they
separated the boys from the girls. Some of the earlier teachers of select
schools were attracted into the public schools, as was Emily Hotchkiss,
by the good salaries of the early forties. However, as Superintendent
Mack complained, "many [parents continued to] withdraw their chil
dren from the public schools with the belief that their morals are better

Nov. 19, 1839; King, Looking Backward; G. B. F. Hallock and Maude Motley,
A Living Church: The First Hundred Years of Brick Church, p. 181.

i^Roch. Republican, Nov. 19, 1839.

^Observer, May 14, 1830; Democrat, Apr. 22, 28, 1834.

155 Henry Anstice, Annals of St. Luke s Church, p. 34 J R- H. S., Pub., IX,
68-69.

156 Rev. Frederick Zwierlein, "One Hundred Years of Catholicism in Rochester,"
R. H.S., Pub., XIII, 200-211; Aaron Abell, "Elementary and Secondary Catholic
Education in Rochester," R. H. S., Pub., XVI, 133-137.

272 WATER-POWER CITY

protected in private schools" or for "aristocratic^ distinctions." " 7 By
1845 the thirty-three private schools and seminaries of 1840 were re
duced to sixteen, while their 1226 pupils had dwindled to 622, most
of the latter attending the higher schools. Yet reductions in the salaries
of public teachers prompted several^ among them Miss Hotchklss, to
reopen select schools* and a snail number continued into the fifties. 158

Private and incorporate! academies reached the height of their
popularity and influence in the Rochester area during the forties. Several
select and grammar schools, discouraged by public school competition,
added more advanced subjects in an endeavor to hold their pupils for
longer periods. Mrs, Elizabeth Atkinson, widow of the pioneer miller,
converted her select school into the Atkinson Female Seminary in 1841,
continixi&g in a modest fashion until her marriage in 1848 to the noted
revivalist^ Charles G. Finney.* 59 Mr. Miles s grammar school on Ann
Street added a few sciences and equipped itself with the first gymnastic
fixtures advertised in the city, thus prolonging its life for several
years.**

Rochester young folk found increasing opportunities for academic
instruction in neighboring institutions. A half-dozen academies struggled
along for varied periods in the smaller villages of Monroe County, the
most successful being the reorganized Monroe Academy in Henrietta,
the Brockport Collegiate Institute, which rivaled that of Rochester, and
the Clover Street Seminary. The last of these, established in Brighton
by Cdestia A. BIoss, a former teacher in Rochester and author of Bloss
Ancient History, proved especially popular among those eager to return
for weekends at home by stage or canal boat. 161 New academies in LeRoy,
East Bloomfield, and Lima vied with the older institutions in Canandai-
gua, Geneva, and Utica for the patronage of other Rochester young
folk/* 2

The state census of 1845 S ave Monroe County a high rating in school
attendance. There were then 432 scholars in the academies of the
county, as compared with 1,422 in private and select schools, and
14,849 in the common district schools. Only 30 from the entire county
were enrolled in college; yet they almost equalled the number of gradu
ates resident in Rochester. Seven other counties in the state reported
more children of school age, and nine had more sons in college, but only

157 Bd. of Ed,, 2nd Annual Report (1844), P- *6.

358 Bd. of Ed., Ann. Report (1845), pp. 10-12; (1847), pp. 9-10.

^Democrat, Jxme 10, 1841; Apr. 7, 1842; Nov. 21, 1848.

** Democrat, Aug. 29, 1848.

^ Joseph B. Bloss, W A Full History of the School," Rochester Post-Express,
Feb. 10, 1894.

162 McKelvey, "Educational Frontier," pp. 28-31; Clarissa Reynolds letters to
her parents from Miss Sheldon s school in Utica, 1841-42, Autograph Letter Col
lection, Roch. Hist. Soc.

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CIVIC AND INSTITUTIONAL AFFAIRS 273

five exceeded Monroe either in the number of academy scholars or in
common school enrollment 1 * 8

Another class of private schools offered varied opportunities for adults.
"Writing professors 77 frequently advertised a course of fifteen evening
lessons guaranteed to provide ladies and gentlemen with an elegant
handwriting or a knowledge of bookkeeping, 164 Music and dancing
lessons were likewise available from time to time. Mr. P. Thomas made
more than one visit ? engaging rooms in the Mansion House, where the
ball room remained popular until the destruction of the favorite old
tavern by fire. "It matters not/ 7 he advised the public, "how well a
person can dance a cotillion or contra dance, still they cannot join in
the waltz, nor yet in the more graceful Spanish dances." 165 More prosaic
was the projected Mount Hope Agricultural and Horticultural School,
but the abortive attempt to found an agricultural college at Wheatland
in 1846 ended with an equally unsuccessful effort to reestablish it near
the Ellwanger and Barry nurseries in Rochester. 166 Meanwhile, despite
several attempts to found a full-fledged college, the mid-century rolled
around ere the dream was realized. 167

Fortunately the intellectual needs of adult citizens received the atten
tion of varied societies. The functions of collecting a library, maintain
ing a reading room, arranging lecture courses, and providing facilities
for discussion and debate were sufficiently public in character to insure
that whenever one society faltered another appeared to carry on. Thus,
when both the Athenaeum and the Young Men s Society of the early
thirties declined, a new organization, known as the Mechanics Associa
tion, was formed by sixteen young men in February, 1836. With young
William A. Reynolds as president, more than one hundred members
soon enrolled, and a library of around fifteen hundred books slowly
accumulated. For more than a decade the association, despite frequent
changes in location, afforded its members an opportunity for reading
and discussion. 168

The voluminous output of numerous printers and the enterprise of

163 N. Y, State Census (1845), recapitulation, i and 2. The number of known
college men resident in Rochester did not exceed two score at any one time
during the forties, but the evidence is too scattered to be conclusive. See F. DeW.
Ward, Churches of Rochester (Rochester, 1871), for the educational background
of the successive ministers.

164 Advertiser, Dec. 14, 1838; Nov. 19, Dec. 4, 1840.

^Advertiser, Mar. 27, 1832; Dec, n, 1833; Oct. 6, 1846; Democrat, Sept 25,
1839; Feb. 17, 1847-

^Genesee Farmer, VII (1846), 7; VIII (1847)* 10.

167 See below, pp. 293-295.

168 The Charter, Constitution and By-Laws of the Mechanics Literary Associa
tion of the City of Rochester (Rochester, 1843) ; Blake McKelvey, "Early Library
Developments in and around Rochester," R. H. S., Pub., XVI, 32-33

274 THE WATER-POWER CITY

several bookstores supplied further range for literary tastes. Private
libraries were Increasing in size, though perhaps few rivaled that gath
ered by the much-travelled Dr. ABSOH Colman ? which included 426
at the time of Ms death in 1837. Yet the number able to enjoy
such facilities was limited. The want of an institution that would offer
"intellectual and moral attractions to counteract the vicious allurements
to which the young men of this city are largely exposed" was emphasized
by the startling report of the community s first murder. Under the vig
orous leadership of Henry O Reilly a new organization was formed in
1837, known as the Young Men ? s Association, and two thousand books
were coEected for a reading room, ambitiously designated the City
Library 169

It proved an appropriate moment for such a development, since the
lyceum movement was just then spreading into the West. 170 The Ameri
can tour of the Honorable James S. Buckingham in 1838 played a minor
part in the development, for despite that travelers moderate talents as
a public speaker, his efforts to defray the cost of his tour by lectures on
Egypt and Palestine revealed the latent demand. 171 After assisting Buck
ingham with his appointments in western New York, O Reilly found
himself acting as talent agent for neighboring young men s societies and
occasionally invited speakers to Rochester from Buffalo or New England.
One of the most popular of these, the "Learned Blacksmith/ Elihu Bur-
ritt, made repeated visits. 112

Under the enthusiastic leadership of Henry O Reilly, the Association
became a focal center of the community. The moribund Athenaeum
soon determined to merge with the new society and elected the latter s
officers to its board. Reorganization was quickly effected under the name
Athenaeum and Young Men s Association, with O Reilly as president,
whEe a membership campaign enrolled more than 500 dues-paying
members and enlarged the book collection to nearly 4ooo. 173 Busts of
Franklin, Clinton, Washington, Napoleon, Cicero, Demosthenes, and
Homer added dignity to the reading room. 174 With ambitious plans for

Brief Report of the Rise, Progress and Condition of the Rochester
Athenaeum and Young Men s Association (Rochester, 1840), p. 5; Mrs. Alice T.
Sutton, who has searched the inventories of twenty-five Rochesterians mentioned
frequently in these pages, finds thirteen which recorded libraries, numbering from
108 to "about 600" and averaging 235. These were of course exceptional or selected
cases.

170 Weld, Brooklyn Village, pp. 233-245.

171 Letters to and from J. S. Buckingham in 1838 and 1840, O Reilly Doc., Nos.
954, 1640. See also J, S. Buckingham, America, Historical, Statistic, and Descriptive
(London, 1841), in, 46-97.

^Advertiser, Nov. 15, 1839; ^ ar - l6 > 1841; Letters to and from EHhu Burritt,
1838-1843, O Reilly Doc., Nos. 1486, 1637-1639.

1TS O Reilly Doc., No. 2174; Democrat, Feb. 22, Aug. 5, 1839.
1T4 ReiDy Doc., No. 2174.

CIVIC AND INSTITUTIONAL AFFAIRS 275

the erection of an Athenaeum and library building, O Reilly took an
option on a centrally located property, but the darkening shadows of
the depression discouraged further action, and the project was aban
doned. 175

The Association s major problem was that of enlisting adequate lead
ership. Though resigning as president in 1840, O Reilly continued to
devote much attention to the affairs of the Association until Ms removal
to Albany in 1842. For a time Dr. Chester Dewey carried the burden
of arranging the lecture programs and supervising the care of the library,
but mounting difficulties closed the reading room for a full year in 1845.
After a sale of some books enabled the officers to free the library from
debt, new rooms were opened over the Museum on Exchange Street in
1847. An active lecture program that year revived plans for consolida
tion with the Mechanics Association, which had continued in a modest
fashion as a library and debating society throughout the decade. 176

Unexpected advantages resulted from the union of the two societies
under the name Athenaeum and Mechanics 7 Association. William A.
Reynolds, long the most active leader of the smaller group, saw an
opportunity to benefit the community and at the same time develop bis
property back of the Arcade by erecting a spacious lecture hall in what
was practically the city s population center. When Corinthian Hall,
built at a cost of $12,000, opened in the summer of 1849, the Association
could look ahead to a period of prosperity during which the proceeds
from popularly attended lectures would maintain a serviceable library.
The book collections of the parent organizations were joined and moved
into new rooms in the Reynolds Arcade, providing a library not un
worthy of comparison with those of other small cities of the day. 177 But
it was in the facilities afforded by Corinthian Hall that adult Roches-
terians saw an opportunity to enjoy the edification supplied by the
increasing number of traveling lyceum lecturers at the mid-century. The
arrival of Richard Henry Dana in 1849 proved a good omen for the
future. 178

1T5 O y Reffly Doc., No. 2218.

176 Democrat, Mar. 3, 1840; Feb. 20, 1841; Apr. 24, 1845; Jan. 12, 19, 28,
Apr. 20, 1847,- Advertiser, May 16, 1841; Apr. 22, 1844; May 5, July 9, 1847.

17T McKeIvey, "Early Library Developments," pp. 39-42; Advertiser, June 26,
28, 1849 ; July i, 1850 ; Wm. A. Reynolds, "Works Street Building Account Book"
(1848-1861), MS, R. P. L.

178 Democrat, Jan. 4, 1849; Rock. Republican, Aug. 23, 1849.

CHAPTER X

SOCIAL AND CULTURAL EXPRESSION

1834-1850

DESPITE the turbulent economic environment and the urgent civic
problems of Rochester s first urban decades, her citizens enjoyed
increased opportunities for social expression. In many respects
developments here proved more gratifying than in either the civic or
economic fields. Indeed, by the mid-century the city was to achieve a
fair degree of cultural fullness and self-sufficiency.

Religion still supplied the chief cultural dynamic, and while much
energy was consumed in institutional organization, sufficient remained
to give force to numerous humanitarian movements. The latter were
called forth, at least in part, by the new urban environment, in which
varied social traditions and new group aspirations contended for domi
nance. The rivalry found vent in political, journalistic, and institutional
struggles and occasionally in disorderly outbursts. Among the host of
newcomers, many with professional training arrived to fill the places left
vacant by some of the earlier settlers, enabling Rochester to share in
the cultural florescence of the East. But if many older settlers moved
on, others remained, and the late forties saw them basking for the first
time in reminiscences of the city they had helped to build.

RELIGIOUS AND HUMANITARIAN TRENDS

The vibrant religious activity of the early thirties continued to ani
mate the life of Rochester. Repeated revivals joined with old and new
doctrinal disputes and with fresh cleavages over social problems to raise
up new churches, new sects, and new humanitarian movements. At the
same time several of the older institutions, enjoying increased stability,
developed a tendency toward conservatism. A new link was forged
between the religious and educational functions in the city when the
Baptists finally succeeded in establishing both a college and a theological
seminary at the close of the period.

The fifteen churches of the mid- thirties represented the major group-
activity (excepting the family) in the newly-established city. Not only
did the regular Sabbath morning and evening sermons generally fill

SOCIAL AND CULTURAL EXPRESSION 277

an hour or so each, but Sunday afternoon sermons were not unusual,
though adult Bible classes provided substitutes in a few cases. 1 The
numerous Sabbath schools enrolled 2200 pupils in 1839, and 2875 in
1848 when 300 teachers rendered volunteer service. 2 Regular mid-week
prayer meetings and, at least in the case of the Methodists, testimonial
class meetings proved customary, while special religious organizations
consumed additional time. The Reverend George Beecher, third son of
Lyman Beecher and a recent arrival from Lane Seminary, complained
in 1838 that the number of church cares obstructed his efforts to "main
tain a clear and abiding view of Heaven." Nevertheless, regretting to
see family worship neglected, Beecher spurred himself to perform a
weekly stint of twenty pastoral calls and to maintain two weekday
classes for the religious instruction of eighty children. Fortunately, he
enjoyed the cooperation of several pious elders and found time to gather
with other Protestant pastors every Monday morning for fellowship
and prayer. 3

The evangelical spirit which had swept the community in the early
thirties, routing old Calvinists and deists alike, had failed to achieve
lasting dominance. Perhaps economic recovery, by supplying a more
tangible justification for optimistic individualism, relaxed the need for
humanitarian sublimation and spiritual stays. At any event, resurgent
doctrinal disputes disturbed the harmony achieved among the leading
Protestant churches during Finney s revival. The Presbyterians, the
most numerous sect in Rochester, were particularly distraught. The two
younger of their four societies, Third and Free Church, suffered from
internal strife. Still another, Bethel Free Congregation, led out from
First Presbyterian by Elder John F. Bush in 1836, nourished a small
company who enjoyed freedom of discussion with respect to the moral
and political issues of the day. 4

The local situation reflected the growing division among Presbyterians
throughout the nation. Divergence of opinion over the slave question,
rivalry between Lane Seminary and Oberlin College, differences of tem
perament between Eastern and Southern orthodox Calvinists on the one
hand and such men as Finney, Weld, and Gerrit Smith on the other

1 J. M. Schermerhorn to his wife, Rochester, July, 1838, Schermerhorn Letters,
courtesy of Mrs. Rudoph Stanley-Brown, Washington, D. C., photostat copies in
Roch. Pub. Library; The Christian Mirror (Rochester, 1847), I: 9-10, 26-27.

2 Rochester Daily Democrat, July n, 1839; Rochester Daily Advertiser, Nov. 14,
1848.

3 Biographical Remains of the Reverend George Beecher (New York, 1844),

PP- 53-76.

4 Rev. Orlo J. Price, "One Hundred Years of Protestantism in Rochester,"
R. H. S., Pub., XII, 281; J. M. Maurer, "The Central Presbyterian Church,"
Rochester Post-Express, May 4, 1894; A Century with Central Presbyterian Church
(Rochester, 1936), pp. 1-6.

278 THE WATER-POWER CITY

all were more or less directly mvoKred. 5 In this larger struggle for control
of the churchy the conservative Old School element prompted the Gen
eral Assembly to adopt the Exscinding Act of 1837 which practically
read out of the fold the strongly evangelical synods of western New York
and northern Ohio, 18

Efforts to heal the breach, though unsuccessful, put a check to the
more radical trends in Rochester. George Beecher, a delegate to the
General Assembly at Philadelphia in 1839, prayed devoutly that the
slavery question and other differences among the brethren might be
overcome/ When the Old School Assembly refused to readmit their
erstwhile rivals, a separate New School Assembly was formed by the
exscinded churches^ but the Rochester pastors held aloof from both
assemblies for several years. 8 Staunch advocates of orthodoxy emerged,
such as Tryon Edwards of First Church and Albert G. Hall who in
1840 was called to Third Church, already well established in its second
stone building and adhering to conservative CaMnist traditions. 9
Beecher felt inclined after his return from Philadelphia to expound the
doctrine of "entire sanctification" but stoutly denied that he had swung
over to the Oberlin camp. 10 When, at his father s suggestion, Beecher
resigned Ms charge at Brick Church, the warm spirit of his successor,
James B. Shaw, was held in check by Edwards and Hall. A Fifth Pres
byterian Church, established in the interim by the moderate school,
became Fourth Church when the radical Free Church dissolved. Yet
Mrs. Atkinson, the school teacher widow of an early miller, who "em
braced Mr. Finney s views of Sanctification" (and later the revivalist
himself as Ms second wife) , persuaded many of her friends to read and
ponder the doctrines of the Oberlin Evangelist. Other free spirits, find
ing themselves in the minority at Bethel, withdrew in 1841 to found
the First Congregational Church, with strong antislavery and other
Oberlin sentiments. 11

Revivals had been recurrent in the area throughout these years, and
when Charles G. Finney visited Rochester briefly in 1840, 1841, and

5 Gilbert H. Barnes, The Antislavery Impulse: 1830-1844 (New York, 1933),
pp. 162-163, and passim.

6 Rev. James M. Hotchkin, A History of Western New York and of the Rise,
Progress and Present State of the Presbyterian Church (New York, 1848), pp. 222-
240.

7 Biographical Remains of the Reverend George Beecher t pp. 79$.

8 Hotchkin, History of Western New York, pp. 241-252 ; History of the Rochester
Presbytery (Rochester, 1889), pp. 31, 43-56; Democrat, May 25, Aug. 9, 1839.

9 "Tryon Edwards," National Cyclopedia of American Biography , XIV, 155;
Third Presbyterian Church, "Annals from Record Books," MS in Roch. Hist. Soc.

^Biographical Remains of the Reverend George Beecher f pp. 79!!.
11 Elisabeth S. S. Eaton to her husband, Rochester, Feb. 8, 17, 1840, E. S. S.
Eaton Letters; Price, "One Hundred Years of Protestantism," pp. 282-283.

SOCIAL AND CULTURAL EXPRESSION 279

1842 the forces of evangelicalism regained ascendancy. The aloof stand
of Edwards and Hall could not stop the "refreshing shower" brought to
Bethel by Finney and to Brick Church by Jedediah Burchard. 12 The
Methodists and Baptists eagerly opened their doors. Possibly the re
markable results, notably those of Finney among lawyers and business
men, resulted in part from renewed hardships in the economic sphere.
Thus Abelard Reynolds, having recently washed his hands of unfortu
nate land speculations, assured Ms daughter that he was "struggling to
expiate my former delinquencies" in spiritual matters. 18

Fervid revivals continued to uplift the city during the mid-forties.
Levi A. Ward rejoiced in March, 1843, to &&& "protracted meetings" in
progress in twelve city churches, while the pious realtor, J, M. Schermer-
horn, wrote Ms wife that several of the churches are "very much filled
up" though "Christians are considerably exhausted from the long pro
tracted efforts, being 7 or 8 weeks." Brick Church had to "resort to the
Galleries for seats to supply all the applicants" at the annual rental
that spring, for "never did pews find so ready and rapid a market." M

Warm revivals and fresh accessions to the population were chiefly
responsible for the organization of several other new churches. Indeed,
most of the established denominations enjoyed an active growth, possi
ble exceptions being Bethel Church, wMch continued primarily as a
Sabbath school, and St. PauFs, the east-side Episcopal parish. Mis
fortune dogged the latter s path, with doctrinal disputes, a scandal
involving one of the pastors, two destructive fires, and perennial financial
difficulties closely following one another. St. Luke s was more fortunate,
as the friction of Antimasonic days disappeared during the ministry of
Dr. Henry J. WMtehouse, and healthy growth prompted the first steps
in 1845 to organize Trinity Church, the tMrd Episcopal society in
the city. 15

The First Baptist Church, stimulated by the refreshing revivals of
Elder Jacob Knapp in the late thirties, was led with increasing skill and
devotion by Deacons Oren Sage and Alvah Strong and by the Reverend
Pharcellus Church, whose efforts to harmonize the free and orthodox
wings of his flock proved eminently successful. Second Baptist, organized
in 1834 for the east-siders, took over the spacious home of Third Pres
byterian, becoming the first church in Rochester to admit Negroes to

12 E. S. S. Eaton to her husband, Rochester, Jan. 25, 31, Feb. 15, 1842, E. S. S.
Eaton Letters; Schermerhorn Letters, July 21, 31, 1841; Edwin Scrantom s Diary,
Mar. 4, 21, 1842, MS, Roch. Hist. Soc.

^Abelard Reynolds to Clarissa Reynolds, Rochester, Mar. 15, 1842, and
Reynolds Letters in Roch. Hist. Soc., passim.

14 Schermerhorn Letters, Mar. 14, 29, 1843.

15 Rev. Henry Anstice, Centennial Annals of St. Luke s Church, pp. 26-36;
Rev. Louis C. Washburn, Historical Sketch of the Episcopal Church in the City
of Rochester, N. 7. (Rochester, 1908).

2&o THE WATER-POWER CITY

the body of pews. 16 When the large Methodist church on Buffalo

Street was destroyed by fire in 183,5; ^ e officials promptly voted to
rebuild. Soon the largest auditorium in the city, able to seat two thou
sand said to be the largest Methodist chapel in the country, opened
for usej and a rapid succession of pastors struggled under the burdens
of a numerous congregation and a heavy debt. 17 An African Methodist
Church^ organized in 1834, proved more enduring than its predecessor
of I828, 38 while an East Society of the Methodist Church, first estab
lished in 18365 reorganized as St. John s Church in 1842, the same year
that another Methodist society moved in from Cobb s Hill schoolhouse
to become the Alexander Street Methodist Church. Meanwhile, a group
of German Protestants, organized as the Zion Lutheran Society in the
early thirties, erected a church and opened a parochial school in iS38. 19

Apparently the most rapid growth was enjoyed by the Catholics who
benefited directly from the swelling stream of German and Irish immi
grants. Popular hostility subsided somewhat after the demise of the
Observer v though much ill feeling developed when the Young Men s
Society debated the influence of Catholicism in America. 20 So rapid was
the expansion of St. Patrick s congregation that Bernard O Reilly, the
priest in charge, readily cooperated with the Redemptorist missionary,
Father Joseph Prost, in the establishment in 1836 of a German Catholic
Church, later known as St. Joseph s, With a membership of six hundred
at the start, the new church survived the hard years after the departure
of Father Prost in 1838 and, assisted by missionary funds from the
Leopold Foundation in Europe, completed a new building on Franklin
Street by 1846. A second German Catholic church, St. Peter s, had
already been erected on the west side, and the three large Catholic
parishes, each equipped with a stone church and parochial school,
possibly ranked second only to the Presbyterians in numbers by the
mid-forties, 21

Doctrinal and personality difficulties disturbed many of these churches,

16 Centennial Celebration; First Baptist Church: 1818-1918 (Rochester, 1918),
pp. 10-20; Charles M. WMams, Seventy-Fifth Anniversary of the Second Baptist
Church (Rochester, 1909) ; "FharceBus Church/* Dictionary of American Biography f
IV, 104.

17 Rev* M. Tooker, Poems and Jottings of Itinerancy in Western New York
(Rochester, 1860), pp. 143-144; Elijah Hebard, "Autobiography," MS in Roch.
HisL Soc.

18 Democrat, Aug. 27, 1834.

1& Price, "One Hundred Years of Protestantism," pp. 278-279, 280, 283-284.

w Democrat, Jan, 12, Feb. 18, 1835.

21 Roch. RepubUcan, Aug. 22, 1843; July 28, 1846; T. W. MuOaney, Four Score
Tears: A History of Catholic Germans in Rochester (Rochester, 1916) , pp. 40-41 ;
Rev. F. J. Zwierlein, "One Hundred Years of Catholicism," R. H. S., Pub., XIH,
197-203.

SOCIAL AND CULTURAL EXPRESSION 281

though not so seriously as in the case of the Presbyterian. A group of
zealous opponents of slavery formed a new Wesleyan Methodist Society
in 1843, Just a year after several doctrinaire liberals seceded from Zion
Lutheran to found Trinity Evangelical. A small band of Free-Will Bap
tists, who held occasional meetings during the late thirties, did not
formally organize until I845. 22 Both the Orthodox and the Hicksite
Friends continued their separate societies, the former led by Silas Cor
nell and the latter by Isaac Post and Elihu F. Marshall among others. 23

Two groups of religious dissenters reappeared in Rochester during
the period. The Unitarians, renewing their efforts to establish a church,
rejoiced in the late thirties over the arrival of Myron Holley, a fellow
communicant whose long career in the Genesee Country had won him
wide respect. But Holley s death in 1841 dealt a severe blow to the
society, and although it successfully dedicated a building in 1843,
public sentiment proved sufficiently hostile to exclude its pastor, the
Reverend F. W. Holland, from the ceremonies in honor of Myron
Holley. 24 Possibly the fact that most Rochester Yankees hailed from
Connecticut and western Massachusetts, rather than from the Boston
area, contributed to the feeble state of Unitarianism in the city. A suc
cession of Universalist pastors, serving a small flock in Rochester as
well as outlying charges, published the Herald of Truth in the late
thirties, a struggling weekly which was renamed the Western Luminary
in 1840. Lack of support prompted a removal of the paper to Buffalo
in the mid-forties when the local pastors likewise moved away. 25

Even less popular, if possible, was a small group of deists and free
thinkers. Some one hundred assembled at the City Hotel on January
29, 1835, to celebrate Paine s birthday, and the next year a local
gathering heard the famous Boston "infidel," Abner Kneeland, stopping
off on his route westward. When friction between this group and the
Free-Will Baptists over use of the Court House prompted the super
visors to close the doors on Sundays, the Society of Free Enquirers
continued their meetings for several years in a grocery. Two freethought
weeklies, The World as It 1$, launched by Dr. Luke Shepard in 1836,
and the New York Watchman, brought to Rochester by Delazon Smith

22 Price, "One Hundred Years of Protestantism," pp. 278-279) 283-284.

^Thomas C. Cornell, Adam and Anne Mott (Poughkeepsie, 1890), pp. 129-132,
174, 198; John Cox, Jr., and Percy E. Clapp, "Quakers in Rochester," R. H. S.,
Pub., XIV, 106-108; "Isaac Post," Dictionary of American Biography, XV, 117.

^Rev. F. W. Holland to Gerrit Smith, Rochester, 1844, Calendar of Gerrit
Smith Papers in Syracuse University Library, General Correspondence, I, No. 899
(Historical Records Survey, WPA, Albany, 1941) ; Elizur Wright, Myron Holley
and What He Did for Liberty and True Religion (Boston, 1882), pp. 311-312.

^Theodore D. Cook, Memoir of Rev. James M. Cook (Boston, 1854), pp. 77-
252.

282 THE WATER-POWER CITY

in 1838, barely survived their birth years ? and the disciples of Tom
Paine dropped from view by the mid-forties. 28

<

Despite the never-ending organizational problems, so fervid were the
religious energies of the community that older reforms prospered^ while
mew sects and new humanitarian movements appeared. Though most
of these movements were national in scope, Rochester s part in them
frequently proved extensive. The pacifist agitation of the mid-thirties
and the campaign for spelling reform afforded noteworthy exceptions, 27
but otherwise the Flour City maintained its reputation as a hotbed of
"isms." Curiously, Jacksonianism, which Edwin Scrantom considered
"worse than any other few, not excepting rhumatfem," enjoyed less
success locally than in most parts of the country. 28

Among the earlier religious activities maintained with vigor through
out these years were foreign missions, local Bible distribution, and the
campaign for Sabbath observance. The increasing number of Roches-
terians in foreign missions kept interest in the work alive and helped
to broaden the community s horizon. 29 Local efforts in this field attracted
praise in 1843 when the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign
Missions gathered at First Church to survey the work of the year. 80
Hie Monroe County Bible Society periodically renewed its attempt to
place a Bible in every home, employing full-time agents on three occa
sions, when the distribution extended over two-year periods. Nearly
two thousand Bibles were disposed of by the close of 1840, and four
thousand more by the end of 1846, while the budget for the last three
years of the decade totaled $i3,ooo. 31

Less gratifying were the achievements of the Sabbath reformers. The
reversals suffered by "Pioneerism" in the early thirties embarrassed the

^Democrat, Feb. 6, 1835; Mrs. MariHa Marks, ed. y Memoirs of the Hfe of
David Marks (Dover, New Hampshire, 1847), pp. 354-356; Albert Post, Popular
Freethought in America, pp. 60, 64-65,

27 Ebenezer Mead, War. Inconsistent with the Prindpks of the Gospel (Albion,
N. Y., 1835) J Genesee OKo, Mar. 25, Apr. 8, 22, 1848.

28 Scrantom, Diary, July 17, 1837.

29 Among the Rochester missionaries may be mentioned Miss Delia Stone,
Mr. and Mrs. S. A. Webster, Rev. Nathan Benham, Miss Isabel Jane Atwater
[White], Dr. Henry De Forest, Prof. George Loomis, Miss Fanny M. Nelson
[McKinney], Miss H. EKzabeth Wright, Rev. Henry D. Rankin, and Rev. Grover
S. Comstock. Their fields included Africa, China, Burma, Siam, Syria, and the
Sandwich Islands. Democrat, May 22, 1835; July 12, 1839; Rock. Republican,
Mar. 16, 1847; Sept. 27, 1849; Advertiser, Oct. i, 1847; June 28, 1848; Raymond
Scrapbook, pp. 25, 217, Roch. Hist. Soc.; Price, "One Hundred Years of
Protestantism," pp. 265-266.

30 Democrat, Sept. 13, 14, 15, 1843.

81 Rock. Republican, June 4, 1839; Democrat, Dec. 28, 18485 Raymond Scrap-
book, p. 193; Monroe County Bible Society Record Book, pp. 42-55, MS, Roch.
Hist, Soc.

SOCIAL AND CULTURAL EXPRESSION 283

movement for several years, moreover the Increased activity of the city
made the old standards of a quiet Sabbath difficult to maintain. Hie
issue reappeared in 1841 when the farmers of nearby Gates complained
against the desecration of their Sabbath by city dwellers, prompting
several Rochester churchmen to call a convention at Bethel Church
to consider the problem. 32 Memorials were adopted, urging the State
to close the canals on that day and demanding the enforcement of
existing regulations. Hope was expressed that if the canals closed, the
railroads would follow suit, but the legislature quietly tabled the
Rochester resolutions along with those from other parts of the State. 8 *
Many of the increasing number of reform agents, eager to get about the
country quickly to their numerous appointments, were finding it desir
able to travel on the Sabbath, and the agitation lost its force. 34

An active Moral Reform Society held frequent meetings during the
mid-thirties, enrolling some two hundred members pledged to combat
licentiousness and shun loose male as well as female companions. But
the number of expulsions increased after the first six months, and in
terest lagged when the leaders banned a free discussion of the issues
involved. Sermons on the double standard were scheduled, but the
society soon dropped from view. 35

No doubt the agitation of the temperance reformers aroused the most
interest. Though Mayor Child s dramatic resignation in 1835 termi
nated the first effort to limit the grant of grocery licenses, the several
temperance societies soon redoubled their activities. A female temperance
society was especially active, soliciting total abstinence pledges with
such diligence that Monroe became one of three counties to secure
pledges from 9.6 per cent of the population in 1839, when the state
as a whole averaged but half as many. 86 The hardships of the depression,
with its heavy burden for relief, prompted O Reilly, Peck, and Child to
draw up a balance sheet, which credited the city with $946 in license
fees in 1840 as against $9,000 paid out for public relief, $6,000 in pri
vate charity, $65,000 squandered on liquor, another $65,000 lost in
wasted labor time, and $5,000 in property damages, or a total of
$150,000 on the debit side. 37 A grand jury, after an examination of

^Democrat, Nov. 12, 1841.

33 Democrat, July 20, 21, 22, 23, 1842; Penny Preacher, July 21, 22, 1842;
Senate Doc. (1844), Nos. 66, 119.

34 Penny Preacher, Sept. 10, 1842.

35 Moral Reform Society, Minute Book, 1836-1837, MS, Roch. Hist Soc.;
Advertiser, Nov. 9, 1833; Rochester Daily Sun, June 27, Nov. 21, 1839.

38 Elisabeth S. S. Eaton to her husband, Rochester, December 31, 1841; Jan. 25,
1842, E. S. S. Eaton Letters; John A, Krout, "The Genesis and Development of
the Early Temperance Movement in New York State/ N. Y. State Historical
Assoc. Quarterly Journal, XXI (1923), 93-94-

37 Democrat, Jan. 21, 1841.

284 THE WATER-POWER CITY

the jail inmates in 1842, finding that the great majority attributed
their fall to liquor, declared that the crime cost should be added to
the account. 85

Frequent meetings rallied the temperance f orces. Reformed drunkards,
touring the country under the auspices of the Washingtonian Society,
visited Rochester in 1843 an d succeeding years, a canal boatmen s con
vention at Bethel Church indorsed the reform, and varied temperance
societies of young men, young women, and Hibernians collected a total
of sis thousand teetotal pledges in the county within a period of eighteen
months, while at least 500 drunkards were reported saved during the
same period. 3

The more ardent reformers, impatient for results, soon turned from
the strategy of individual pledges to that of legislation. When the legis
lature, reluctant to assume responsibility, compromised with a local-
option provision in 1845, a Western New York Temperance Convention
met in the Methodist Chapel and promptly urged no-license policies on
local authorities.* Fourteen hundred women, bemoaning their lack of
the ballot, petitioned voters to safeguard their welfare at the polls, and
candidates pledged to a no-license policy carried the city the next May,
though the police were soon baffled by the number of liquor dealers
operating without licenses. 11 As opinion gradually reacted against drastic
measures, license candidates triumphed at the polls in April, i847- 42
"Rochester is disgraced! Shame! Shame! Tell it not in Bath. . . .
Buffalo and Albany keep dark I 37 mourned a local editor who soon
pointed to the mounting crime statistics as progeny of "Liberty and
License." 43 Yet it was no longer possible even to collect license fees
from most dealers, and in 1849, when seventy licenses were issued, 400
other liquor dealers were reported in the community. 44

Several leaders of these older reform movements became interested
in new humanitarian causes. Myron Holley, who replaced Josiah Bissell
as the stormy petrel of Rochester in the thirties, was not only an Anti-
mason, strict Sabbatarian and temperance advocate, but an opponent
of slavery, and a free churchman turned Unitarian. At his early death
the banner of righteousness was carried forward by William C. Bloss,
a reformed tavern keeper who championed most of the above causes

88 Penny Preacher, Oct. 15, 1842.

39 Democrat, Apr. 24, Aug. 10, 1843; Aug. 14, Nov. 27, 1844; O Reilly Doc.,
1006, 1007, 1727, MSS, Rod*. Hist. Soc.j The Story of Sammy the Sailor Boy,
by a Bethel Man (Rochester, 1843), pp. 134-135.

^Democrat, Oct. 23, 24, 1845.

^Advertiser, May n, 18, 20, 1846; Democrat, June 9, 1846.

^Advertiser, May 21, 1846; Democrat, Feb. 24, 1847; Genesee OUo, Mar. 27,
Apr. 28, 1847; Raymond Scrapbook, p. 15.

48 Genesee OUo, Apr. 28, Sept, 4, 1847.

^Democrat, Mar. 16, 1849.

SOCIAL AND CULTURAL EXPRESSION 285

and women s rights as well. 45 Each new movement attracted some fresh
blood, but, once enrolled, most of the reformers Samuel D. Porter,
Isaac and Amy Post, and Frederick Douglass among others gave
generous support to every cause. Though curious crowds usually swelled
the thin ranks of the reformers at their repeated "conventions/ 7 most
RochesterianSj if interested at all, inclined to follow the more moderate
leadership of such men as Henry O Reiily, Levi A, Ward, and Dr.
Chester Dewey.

Interest in the plight of the slave gained active expression locally
during the mid-thirties. The organization of the Rochester Anti-Slavery
Society in 1833 and the launching at the end of the year of William C.
Bloss s Rights of Man preceded by a few months the formation of a
Monroe County Anti-slavery Society. 46 Addresses by young EL B.
Stanton and the zealous Theodore Weld roused sufficient excitement to
alarm moderates and practical politicians, who called a public meeting
at the Court House to indorse Henry O Reilly s resolutions censoring
the abolitionists and declaring the issue to be one for solution in the
South. 47 The issue of slavery in the District of Columbia could not be
dodged, 48 however, and the fears of the politicians seemed justified a
few years later when Myron Holley established the Rochester Freeman,
advocating resort to the ballot box. That appeal split the small band of
Rochester reformers into two factions, with such local Quakers as Isaac
and Amy Post adhering to Garrison s nonpolitical policies, while Samuel
D. Porter, Silas Cornell, and others supported the Liberty Party, The
handful who favored political action staged frequent public meetings
but achieved insignificant results at the polls. Indeed in 1844, a short
month after candidate James G. Birney addressed a public gathering in
Rochester, the party secured but 93 local votes. 49

The problem had not only moral and political but also practical
neighborhood aspects, since a small but respectable group of Negro

45 A Conversation in which the Order of the Sons of Temperance Is Defended
(Rochester, 1846); Sons of Temperance "Black Book" (1848-1852), MS, Roch.
Hist. Soc.; Roch. Republican, June 14, 1849; Calendar of Gerrit Smith Papers;
Myron Holley Letters, O ReiUy Doc., Nos. 2461-2477; Post-Express, Sept. 23, 1893.

46 Rochester Dotty American, Nov. 16, Dec. 30, 1833 ; Democrat, July 23, Aug. 4,
1834; Rights of Man, Apr. 26, May 10, 24, June 7, 21, July 4, 1834.

47 Democrat, June 16, 1834; Sept. 24, 26, 1835; O Reilly Doc., No. 3oe; Barnes,
The Antislavery Impulse, p. 85.

^Democrat, Mar. 4, Sept. 24, 1835.

49 Elisabeth S. S. Eaton to her husband, Rochester, Jan. 28, 1838, E. S. S. Eaton
Letters; Myron Holley to Gerrit Smith, Jan. 12, June i, 1839; Mar. 9, 20, 1840;
George W. Pratt to Gerrit Smith, Dec. 16, 1844, Calendar of Gerrit Smith Papers;
Myron Holley to James G. Birney, Rochester, Jan. i, 1840, D. L. Dumond, ed.,
Letters of James Gillespie Birney: 1831-1857 (New York, 1938), I, 518-519;
Amy H. Croughton, "Anti-Slavery Days in Rochester," R. H. S., Pub., XIV,
120-126; Rochester Freeman, June 12, 1839.

286 THE WATER-POWER CITY

residents suppled a local setting for the larger controversy. As many
as 360 Negroes lived in the city in 1834, among them Thomas James
and Austin Steward, both men of some ability. 50 A separate school had
already been provided for their children, though in most unsatisfactory
quarters^ but the efforts of Levi A, Ward in 1841 to secure a new build
ing for this purpose proved unsuccessful. Occasionally a Negro child
attended one of the district schools until, in 1845, the council put an
end to that practice. When Frederick Douglass located Ms North Star
at Rochester in 1847, ^ e school question presented a difficult problem,
and despite the efforts of many friends the policy of segregation re
mained a cause of complaint until the mid-century, with less than a
third of the sixty-odd Negro children on the school rolls. 51

Possibly the chief accomplishment of the Rochester abolitionists
during the forties was the respectful hearing they enjoyed. While their
two early weeklies had quickly disappeared, and Henry O Reilly s effort
to establish the moderate antislavery Citizen in 1843 me * disaster/ 2
Frederick Douglass, backed with English capital, proved more success
ful with Ms North Star in 1847, soon renamed Frederick Douglass 9
Pa^er. 63 A state convention of Negroes gathered in the city in 1843,
the year in wMch Douglass paid Ms first visit, and three years later
an antislavery convention met peaceably in Rochester. New friends were
won to the cause and funds collected at an antislavery bazaar held at
Concert Hall in 1849. Rochester s newly elected Whig representative
in the legislature, L. Ward Smith, grandson of Dr. Levi Ward, declared
Ms sympathy for the Negro, promising to do what he could in behalf
of the slave. 5 * Friendly aid was occasionally given to slaves fleeing from
the South, chiefly by a few members of the Wesleyan, Congregational,
Quaker, and Unitarian churches; yet the community remained largely
indifferent to the issue.

An increasing participation of zealous women in these reform move
ments gave birth to still another agitation, that for women s rights. The
early activities of the Female Charitable Society and of several public
and private school teachers had received local approbation, and in 1842

50 Rights of Man, Apr. 26, 1834; Thomas James, Wonderful Eventful Life of
Reverend Thomas James (3rd edL; Rochester, 1887) ; Austin Steward, Twenty -two
Years a Slave and Forty Years a Freeman (Rochester, 1857).

^Advertiser, Mar. 24, 1832; Feb. 28, 1833; July 2, 1841; Jan. 17, 1850;
Democrat, Jury 12, 1841; Dec. 14, 1849; Mar. 29, 1850; Croughton, "Anti-Slavery
Bays," p. 130.

^CXReilly Doc., No. 1063, 1521.

63 Frederick Douglass, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (Hartford, Conn.,
1882), pp. 322-328; North Star, Apr. 14, 1848; June 13, 1850; Frederick Douglass
Paper, Aug. 19, 1853; Aug. 31, 1855; Apr. 25, 1856; Jan. 16, 1857; Douglass*
Monthly j April, May, 18595 July, August, 1862.

54 Democrat, Aug. 23, 29, 1843; Mar. 28, 1846; Nov. 4, 1848; Advertiser, Jan. 15,
1849.

SOCIAL AND CULTURAL EXPRESSION 287

when Abby Kelly came to Rochester to address an a&tislavery conven
tion, her ability to hold the audience for three-quarters of an hour was
noted with respect. 55 Nevertheless, when the Ladies Temperance Society
formed in 1841, and the Young Ladies Temperance Hope Society the
next year, many whose interests appeared threatened expressed the
opinion that women s place was in the home. 56

The women, however, were not to be turned back so easily. Their
new freedom of expression, enjoyed on an equal footing with the men
folk in the numerous revivals, in the Sabbath schools and other church
societies, had quickened their spirits. When the American Female Moral
Reform Society staged a convention at Rochester in 1843, although
Pharcellus Church presided, several ladies ventured to take part in the
discussion. 51 News of the rebuffs received by sister reformers at various
temperance and antislavery conclaves roused local resentment, and a few
weeks after the first woman s suffrage convention met at Seneca Falls
in July, 1848, a second convened at the Unitarian Church in Rochester. 58
For the first time a woman, Mrs. Abigail Bush, was elected chairman,
while Amy Post, Rhoda De Garmo, and Mrs. Roberts likewise well
known for their earlier activity in local temperance and antislavery
agitation assumed active roles. Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, both related by marriage to Rochester families, joined with
other visitors in the discussion, as did several men, including Frederick
Douglass and Daniel Anthony. 59

Popular reactions to these sessions varied. One editor derived amuse
ment from the resolution that the word "obey" should be stricken from
the marriage vow, while another remarked that "Verily, this is a pro
gressive era! " 60 Specific local action resulted from Mrs. Roberts report
on working conditions in the city, revealing that seamstresses worked
fourteen and fifteen hours for from 31 to 38 cents a day, although their
frugal board cost $1.25 to $1.50 a week. Two weeks after the close of
the convention a meeting of seamstresses in Mechanic s Hall organized
a Women s Protection Union, choosing Mrs. Roberts as president. Equal
rights with men, wages in cash, and regular hour and piece rates com-

55 Democrat, Aug. 27, 1842; Scnermerhorn Letters, Aug. 29, 1842; National
Cyclopedia of American Biography, II, 323.

56 Rock. Republican, Jan. 29, 1839; Democrat, Nov. 26, 1841; Feb. 17, 1844;
Advertiser, Apr. 30, 1846.

57 Democrat, Sept. 8, 1843. A local Female Moral Reform Society continued
active for some years, see Elisabeth S. S. Eaton to her husband, Aug. 26, 1846,
E. S. S. Eaton Letters.

^Elizabeth Cady Stanton et al, History of Woman Suffrage (New York,
1881), I, 67-76.

59 Stanton, Woman Suffrage, pp. 75-79 ; Cornell, A dam and Anne Mott, pp.
138, 145-46; Advertiser, Aug. 3, 1848; Democrat, Aug. 2, 3, 4, 1848.

60 Advertiser, Aug. 3, 8, 1848; Democrat, Aug. 4, 1848.

2S8 THE WATER-POWER CITY

prised the chief demands. Little is known of the Union s accomplish
ment^ but at least the issue was kept before the public by occasional
meetings that year. 61

Other reforms of the forties received less attention. The anti-tobacco
campaign enlisted few supporters, while tobacco-growers, cutters, and
cigar makers increased in number, 62 A local Prison Discipline Society,
organized in 1847, helped to secure the establishment of the Western
House of Refuge at Rochester in 1849.^ Sympathy for famine sufferers
in Ireland and for the cause of Irish independence inspired frequent
collections, while Rochesterians only thinly disguised their active par
tisanship during the Canadian Rebellion of 183 y. M Mixed feelings
greeted the agitation by Albert Brisbane of the Fourier Phalanx, which
readied Rochester in the spring of 1843 wten the gloom of the depres
sion still darkened the dky. Fourier s communistic scheme won a hearing
at a series of lectures in Mechanic s Hall. Several societies quickly
organized in the area, and sites were purchased at Manchester, Sodus
Bay, Clarkson, and North Bloomfield. A convention of Fourier sympa
thizers held at Rochester in August, 1843, formed the American Indus
trial Union to coordinate their various endeavors. Charges that the
movement was anti-Christian were denied, but economic and social
difficulties within the societies soon brought disaster, and the movement
lost its force locally after I845. 65

As scriptural references generally provided the most telling arguments,
authority for each of these causes was sought in the Bible. Indeed,
interest in the successive reforms (if distinguished from their accom
plishments) seemed to vary in proportion to their religious inspiration,
and certainly no other movements stirred the excitement created by the
appearance of two new sects. Joseph Smith had already led his Mormon
followers farther into the West, though interest in the fortunes of this
unusual sect, born at nearby Palmyra only a few years before, continued
throughout the period. 68 Smith s claims were remarkable enough, but,
true or false, they did not threaten the foundations of society, as was
the case, first with the predictions of the Millerites, and later with the
occult powers of the Fox sisters.

^Advertiser, Aug. 3, 1848; Democrat, Aug. 18, Sept. 2, 25, 1848.

62 Rock. Republican, Dec. 22, 1846; Feb. 16, July 20, 1847; Democrat, Feb. 9,

1847-

^Democrat, Jan. 22, 1844; Feb. 4, 1847.

64 Democrat, Feb. 15, 1847; Aug. 31, 1849; Feb. 21:, 18^0; Rock. Republican,
June i 1847; Advertiser, Aug. 14, 1848; Common Council Proc., Nov. 13, 1838.

65 Roch. Republican, Apr. n, Sept. 5, Nov. 7, 1843 ; Democrat, Apr. 7, 18, 20,
May 18, Aug. 23, 29, 1843; June 25, 1845; American Industrial Union: Articles of
Confederation (Rochester, 1844).

66 Advertiser, July 20, 28, 1842; Mar. 3, 1847; Nov. 17, 1849; Democrat,
Aug. 5, 1844; United States Statistical and Chronological Almanac (Rochester,
1845), p. 42,

SOCIAL AND CULTURAL EXPRESSION 289

The doctrine of William Mfller, based on an interpretation of OH
and New Testament prophecies, created a stir in Rochester as elsewhere.
Miller s writings reached the city in the late thirties/ 7 and by the spring
of 1842 j when many earthly fortunes had reached their lowest ebb ? local
confidence in the rapid approach of the Second Coming was sufficient
to open a camp meeting under a great tent on the eastern edge of the
city. Three of Miller s close brethren arrived with a supply of Second
Advent books, and large crowds began to gather. 68 High winds capsized
the tent on two occasions, yet it served well the purpose of propagating
the doctrine throughout the area that fall. When a convention of Miller-
ites assembled at Talman Hall the next spring, a goodly representation
gathered from the city and the surrounding towns to plan the proper
ceremonies for Christ s Second Coming, now definitely expected some
time during the current Hebraic year which would end on March 21,
1844. As the fateful year advanced, many converts applied for baptism,
and the Reverend Joseph Marsh kept busy at his office in the Reynolds
Arcade answering questions, assembling copy for the Voice oj Truth,
and otherwise preparing for the ascension of the saints. 69 Many citizens
breathed more easily when the last day of the appointed year passed
without event, yet popular excitement revived when a new calculation
advanced the date to October 22nd. A large crowd gathered in Talman
Hall on the evening of the 2ist and again the next day, making prepara
tions to greet their Lord with song and prayer. Fresh converts were
baptized and great confidence was expressed in the impending event.
The papers the next day, preoccupied with the approaching election,
failed to report the disappointment of the Millerites, but the latter s
faith proved resilient when soon a new date was set for 1847. Even
after that year had likewise safely passed, a group of Second Adventists
gathered for a baptism in the Genesee below Andrews Street Bridge,
though the ceremony now attracted only a small crowd/

Already a new religious sensation was at hand, the mysterious knock-
ings by the spirit friends of the Fox sisters. Rumors of strange occur
rences at Hydesville reached the city in the late spring of 1848, and
when Mrs. Leah Fish, a local music teacher, brought her sister Kate,
the youngest Fox girl, to live with her in Rochester, the rappings
recommenced. The zealous Quaker reformers, Isaac and Amy Post, in-

67 Elisabeth S. S. Eaton to her husband, Rochester, Nov. 7, 1839, E - S. S.
Eaton Letters.

68 Advertiser, Mar. 21, 1842; Democrat, June 10, 17, I9> 2 3> 24, 28, July 4, 5,
n, 12, 13, 1843; D. A. B., XII, 641-643-

69 Democrat, Mar. 9, 13, 23, 1844; Jane Marsh Parker, Rochester, A Story
Historical, pp. 251-254. Mrs. Parker, as a daughter of Rev. Marsh, the Millerite,
had many family traditions at her disposal. See also Clara E. Sears, Days of Delu
sion (Cambridge, 1924) , pp. i33~*37 140-141^-

Democrat, Oct T 18, 19, 23, 1844,* Advertiser, Oct. 21, 1845; Sept. 19, 1848,

290 THE WATER-POWER CITY

trigued by the possibility of communicating with the spirits of their
departed friends, became early converts. Despite the meager and cir
cumstantial information vouchsafed from the other world, the possibility
of such communication proved startling enough to attract several
followers. Soon the spirits, desiring a wider audience, specifically de
manded a public demonstration in the newly opened Corinthian Hall.
The request was granted on November 14, 1849? as a crowd of some
four hundred persons gathered to watch the world s first public per
formance of spirit mediums. 71

When the knockings responded as advertised, the incredulous audience
named a committee of citizens to investigate and report the true cause
of the sounds at an adjourned meeting the next evening. However, the
first committee had to admit its inability to detect fraud, and a second
committee likewise failed, prompting skeptical members of the third and
now crowded audience to demand a thorough investigation. A new
committee, including several distinguished physicians among other citi
zens, secured the assistance of three ladies, who examined the girls in a
private room, removing their clothes and interviewing the spirits while
the girls stood on feather pillows in their bare feet. When the third
committee reported that no natural source for the sounds could be
detected, a surge of indignation swept the crowded hall and some angry
skeptics attempted to storm the platform. Fortunately the girls escaped
injury, and the conflict was transferred ta the press. 72 D. M. Dewey
sold 30,000 copies of his pamphlet, History of the Strange Sounds or
Rappings, while, among numerous explanations, Professor George
Loomis of Lima Seminary attributed the rappings to vibrations from
the falls/ 3 Others took the matter more seriously, notably the aged
Abelard Reynolds, who was greatly impressed by this additional evi
dence of a life after death. 74 A band of devoted followers soon enrolled,
though few tears were shed when the Fox sisters left for New York the
next spring. Isaac Butts, the caustic editor of the Advertiser, dismissed
the knockings as another of Rochester s recurrent "Humbugs." 75

-4

Despite the sensational performances of the spiritualists and an in
creasing acceptance of the idea of progress, 76 the late forties witnessed

71 Franklin W. Clark, "The Rochester Rappers," MS of 1930, in Roch. Hist.
Sec.; Adalbert Cronise, "The Beginnings of Modern Spiritualism In and Near
Rochester," R. H. S., Pub., V, 1-22. See also two long Lemuel Clark letters,
Nov. i, Dec. i, 1848, edited by Wheaton P. Webb, New York History, XXIV
(April, 1943), 228-250.

72 Cronise, "Beginnings of Modern Spiritualism," pp. 9-11.

78 Advertiser, Jan. 17, 1850; Rural New Yorker, Feb. 7, 1850.

74 Reynolds Papers, 1850-1852.

75 Advertiser, Apr. 30, May 3, 1850; Diet. Amer. Biog., Ill, 378379.

76 Genesee Olio, Apr. 19, 1849, p. 69. "The man who doubts in human progress
commits the unpardonable sin. To doubt progression is to blaspheme God. *

SOCIAL AND CULTURAL EXPRESSION 291

a conservative trend within several of the leading denominations. A half-
dozen new churches appeared, Increasing the total number to thirty-five
by the mid-century, but only two, the Universalist Church erected in
1847, and the Berith Kodesh Synagogue organized the following year,
represented the permanent establishment of new sects in the city. 7T
Rochester clerics were less outspoken than many of their brethren else
where either in opposition to or support of the Mexican War. 7 * Local
economic revival enabled several of the congregations to balance their
budgets, reduce their debts, in some cases even to enlarge their buildings,
so that the community became known for its handsome churches and its
distinguished pastors. If some of the evangelical romanticism of its early
religious activity disappeared, a new sobriety and appreciation for both
educational and institutional values emerged. 79

Religious customs tended to conform to the urban environment. Two
small papers, The Closet 3 and its successor, The Christian Mirror,
mourned the increased neglect of family worship and the absence of
old devotional stand-bys on the parlor table. The attendance at the
midweek meetings proved discouraging, except during revival periods,
and the frequency, duration, and intensity of the revivals decreased in
the larger city churches during the late forties, 80 Too many other activi
ties engrossed the bustling city, impelling one aging pioneer circuit rider,
who marvelled at how "villages and cities have sprung up, and occupy
the hunting grounds of the aborigines, 7 to wonder at the effect on the
Christian citizen. 81

Doctrinal issues nevertheless retained some potency. Despite the
moderation of the nominally New School Presbyterians of Rochester,
the Reverend Lewis Cheeseman tried to establish an Old School church
in the city; yet the venture quickly disintegrated when Cheeseman
received a call to Philadelphia. 82 When the controversy between High
and Low Church Episcopalians revived over the leanings of Dr. E. B.
Pusey and his Oxford followers toward Catholic forms, Henry W. Lee
denounced such trends from the pulpit at St. Luke s. On the oilier hand,
John Van Ingen stood forth in St. Paul s as the High Church leader of

77 Price, "One Hundred Years of Protestantism," pp. 288-291; Rabbi Horace J.
Wolf, "A History of the Jews of Rochester," R. H. S., Pub., II, 19-1-196.

78 Advertiser, May 28, 1846; Aug. 21, 1847; Rock. Republican, Aug. 24, 1847;
C. S. Ellsworth, "The American Churches and the Mexican War," Amer. Hist.
Review, vol. XLV (January, 1940).

79 Raymond Scrapbook, p. 21, newspaper clipping of 1847.

80 The Closet (Rochester), 1846-1847; The Christian Mirror (Rochester), 1847-
1848.

81 Tooker, Poems and Jottings, p. 113. See also [J, B. Hudson], Narrative of the
Christian Experience, Travels and Labors of John B. Hudson (Rochester, 1838),
pp. 163-164.

^William C. Wisner, A Review of "Differences between Old and New School
Presbyterians" "by Rev. Lewis Cheeseman (Rochester, 1848).

292 THE WATER-POWER CITY

the diocese, though he was cautious about introducing the disputed
rituals. 83 Indeed, with Rochester emerging as a focal center of the con
troversy, became so strained at St. Paul s that it proved diffi
cult for members to discuss religious questions in harmony. J. T. Andrews
confided to his Weather Book on one occasion that "a bell [thought to
be concealed under a deacon s robe] was heard tinkling in the service
after the manner of the Papists." Yet the incident was soon forgotten
when the installation of a fine organ costing $1400 and a bell weighing
3065 pounds enabled St. Paul s, rebuilt after the fire and renamed
Grace Church, to face the future with composure. 8 *

The Catholics likewise encountered difficulties. Outside hostility,
though less outspoken than in many communities, frequently burst
forth. The labors of a Bible Society agent among newly arrived Germans
in 1848 prompted thirty-six families to proclaim their renunciation of
Catholicism and organize the Emanuel Reformed Church with the
Reverend L. Giustiniani, a thorn in the side of faithful Catholics, as its
first pastor. The next year, when Father Bernard O Reilly refused to
proceed with a funeral service until all Odd Fellow badges should be
removed, several members of that newly formed lodge withdrew. 85 Yet
the rapid growth of the three Catholic churches continued unchecked,
and the newly reorganized St. Mary s erected an edifice in 1847. When
the Diocese of Buffalo was set off from that of New York in 1847?
Father O Reilly became vicar-general, and three years later he jour
neyed east as Bishop of Hartford. 8

Father O Reilly was only one of several Rochester pastors of the
period whose abilities brought high honors. Both Joseph Penney and
his successor at First Church, Tryon Edwards, became college presidents,
while Henry J. Whitehouse was called from St. Luke s to accept the
Episcopate of Illinois in 1844. Drs. Church, Luckey, Mclllwaine, Hol
land, and Van Ingen never achieved such rank, though Dr. Lee did

83 Rev. John V. Van Ingen, A.M., The Preacher, An Ordained Witness of Re
vealed Truth (Rochester, 1845) ; Remarks upon "The Papal Aggression" Occasioned
by the Discourses of the Rev. H. W. Lee at St. Luke s Church (1851) ; Memoir of
John Visger Van Ingen (n.d., n.p.) ; Charles W. Hayes, The Diocese of Western
New York (Rochester, 1904), I, 181-187.

84 J. T. Andrews, Weather Book, Jan., 1849, Jan., May, 1850, MS, Roch. Hist.
Soc.

85 Price, "One Hundred Years of Protestantism," p. 294; Raymond Scrapbook,
pp. 193-194; Ray A. BiHington, The Protestant Crusade: 1800-1860 (New York,
1938), p. 308. When Giustiniani withdrew to repeat his work elsewhere, the
church, assuming a less obtrusive role, continued a modest development.

* Advertiser, Sept. 2, Dec. 22, 1847; Sept. 5, 1850. Despite the persistence of
much suspicion and ill-will, Rochester escaped the more extreme expressions of
anti-Catholicism that appeared in New York City and elsewhere during the forties
under the banner of the American Republicans or the Native Americans ; see Louis
Dow Scisco, Political Nativism in New York State (New York, 1901), pp. 15-83.

SOCIAL AND CULTURAL EXPRESSION 293

become a bishop in 1854^ but all were outstanding leaders of their
denominations, and one of Dr. Church s publications anticipated the
doctrine of the unity of natural and spiritual law. S7 Possibly none of these
regular pastors was more highly respected throughout the community
than Dr. Chester Dewey 3 whose readiness to supply any vacant pulpit
each Sabbath did not seem to dimmish despite the increased burdens
of the Collegiate Institute. Indeed, Dewey symbolized the union between
piety and learning that was fast becoming the ideal of Christian Roches-
terians, and many rejoiced in 1850 when Williams College awarded
him an LL.D., his third such honor during the decade. 88

With the merits of a trained clergy gaining fuller recognition, various
denominational leaders in the city coveted the advantages of a seminary
in Rochester. As early as 1826; when the support of local Episcopal
churches had rallied to the aid of Geneva College, regrets were expressed
that the institution could not be located at Rochester. 4 Local Methodist
support was similarly called upon for the development of Genesee
Wesleyan Seminary at Lima after iS^i The Presbyterians had early
given support to Hamilton College, and when the former Rochester
pastor, Joseph Penney, became its president in 1833, Rochester friends
pledged themselves to pay Ms salary. But again the arrangement did
not satisfy local aspirations, and a movement started at First Church
in 1845 for the establishment of a Presbyterian college at Rochester. 91

First conceived as a University of Western New York and later as a
University of Rochester, the project gained wide support throughout
the area in 1846. Dr. Dewey endorsed the movement, a charter was
secured from the legislature, and a board was appointed to raise the
$120,000 considered necessary to establish the university. Pharcellus
Church, pastor of First Baptist, F. W. Holland the Unitarian, and
Samuel Luckey the Methodist, as well as the Mechanics Association,
lent support with the understanding that the college would not be
strictly denominational in character. Yet fear that the seventeen Pres
byterians on the Board would dominate the institution and that the
theological branches would crowd out scientific subjects, coupled with

87 Price, "One Hundred Years of Protestantism," p. 302; Pharcellus Church,
Antioch or the Increase of Moral Power in the Church of Christ {Boston, 1843) j
"Henry W. Lee," Nat. Cyc. of Amer. Biog., Ill, 469. Rev. Samuel Luckey, as
Presiding Elder of the Rochester District, suppled stable leadership to the rapidly
moving Methodist pastors from 1842 until his death in 1869; see T. W. Herring-
shaw, Encyclopedia of American Biography (Chicago, 1898), p. 603.

88 Advertiser, Aug. 24, 1850; Henry Fowler, The American Pulpit (New York,
1856), pp. 49-67-

89 Telegraph, Feb. 7, 1826; Monroe Republican, Feb. 14, Mar. 7, July 4, 1826;
Advertiser f Jan. 21, Apr. 26, 1831.

90 Advertiser, Mar. 12, 1831, Nov. i, 1832; Mar. n, Apr. 2, 1833.

91 Advertiser, Dec. 16, 1833 J Harvey Humphrey, Autograph Letters, Roch. Hist.
Soc., Dec. 26, 1844; Democrat, Jan. 23, Mar. n, 1845.

294 THE WATER-POWER CITY

the difficulties Presbyterians were already encountering in their effort to
maintain Lane ? Western Reserve, and Oberlin in the West, led finally
to the abandonment of the Rochester venture. 92

Local aspirations for an institution of college rank soon reasserted
themselves, however. Rochester Catholics, disappointed in the late
thirties when the Redemptorist foundation which they had sought was
located at Pittsburgh, and when Buffalo became the center of the new
diocese, turned eagerly to plans for the location of a Catholic college
on the Mumford estate overlooking the river at Court and South St.
Paul streets. The College of the Sacred Heart opened in September,
1848, with the object of preparing its boys "chiefly for the ministry/ 7
but the untimely death that fall of its head, Father Julian Delaune,
formerly president of St. Mary s College in Kentucky, forced the insti
tution to close its doors. 93 Thus the field remained open to the Baptists,
possibly the weakest of the five leading sects in the city.

The final establishment of a university at Rochester was curiously
related to the evangelistic forces that had stirred the city for two
decades. The same Elder Jacob JKnapp who had enlivened the spirits
of the First Baptist Church in the late thirties was a decade later
troubling the intellectual waters at Madison University, the reorganized
Baptist Literary and Theological Institution at Hamilton in central
New York. Disturbed over the local controversy and dismayed by the
difficulty of securing financial support in a somewhat isolated neighbor
hood, several of the faculty and trustees considered the possibility of
removal to Rochester. A conference at the First Baptist Church in
September, 1847, won endorsements for the proposed removal both from
the pastor, Pharcellus Church, one of Madison s trustees, and from his
leading deacons, Oren Sage and Alvah Strong. John N. Wilder, a Madi
son trustee from Albany but well-known in Rochester after frequent
visits at the home of his sister, the first wife of Everard Peck, volun
teered support. Western New York Baptists generally favored the
proposal, and many Rochesterians, previously identified with the abor
tive plan of 1846, rallied to the new project. 94

The determined resistance of Hamilton residents finally secured a
court order, stopping the removal plan, but Rochester s desires for a
college could not be checked this -time, and in March, 1850, a charter
was secured from the Regents for a new University of Rochester. The
great majority of the trustees of the new institution were Baptists, but

92 Rock. Republican, July 14, Nov. 24, Dec. 8, 29, 18465 Jan. 5, 19, 1847;
Democrat, Jan. 18, Feb. 8, 24, 1847 ; Jesse L. Rosenberger, Rochester and Colgate
(Chicago, 1925), pp. 13-21.

93 Democrat, May i, 1848; Zwierlein, One Hundred Years of Catholicism, pp.
207-208 ; Mullaney, Catholic Germans in Rochester, pp. 26-30.

94 Rosenberger, Rochester and Colgate, pp. 46-98; Jesse L. Rosenberger, Roch
ester, the Making of a University (Rochester, 1927), pp.

SOCIAL AND CULTURAL EXPRESSION 295

Everard Peck, Frederick WMttlesey and William Pitkin, three of the
city s eight trustees, represented other denominations, while the sixteen
non-Rochesterians on the board helped to give the venture a broad
character. An earnest appeal for $100,000 to launch both the university
and a theological seminary prompted a non-Baptist correspondent,
possibly Chester Dewey, to conclude a letter of support with the sugges
tion, "Let not sectarianism paralyze our efforts as it did two years ago. 1
Proclaiming the Christian, but unsectarian, character of the university,
its leaders promised that instruction would be given in "all the branches
of science and learning which are taught in the most approved universi
ties." The United States Hotel on Buffalo Street was leased for temporary
quarters, and a faculty of five college and two seminary professors, each
to receive $1200 a year, assembled. Five of them came from Madison
University, while E. Peshine Smith (one of Rochester s first Harvard
men) and the venerable Dr. Chester Dewey were respected residents.
When the institutions officially opened to about sixty students on
November 4, 1850, John N. Wilder, President of the Board of Trustees,
noted the general objection to the location of colleges in cities, but
expressed the hope that, although (excepting Columbia in New York
City) Rochester University was the first so located, the enterprise
would prove the wisdom of the choice. 95

DOMESTIC AND SOCIAL LIFE

Rochester s struggle to secure a university prompted an ironic jibe
from neighboring Syracuse. "No peacock ever swelled into larger pro
portions/ 5 declared the Syracuse Star, "or strutted about in a more
complacent and happy air, than our Rochester neighbors assume when
they talk of c our position, our location/ our advantages. . . . What
adds to the exceeding richness of all this, is the fact that the [Rochester]
editors actually believe what they say." Isaac Butts of the Advertiser,
rejoining with a few digs at the village just then applying for its first
pair of long trousers, admitted that his own townsfellows had cause to
be proud. 96 Frequent visitors were obligingly laudatory. "The entrance
to Rochester, from the West, is impressive," remarked WiUis Gaylord
Clark in an exuberant mood, "and when you are once rattling over its
pavements and through its long streets, you fancy yourself in New York
or eke in Philadelphia." 9T Mrs. Eliza Steele, the novelist, declared that

^Rosenberger, Making of a University, pp. 17-43; Raymond Scrapbook, p. 259.
Another Rochester lawyer, Alfred G. Mudge, attended Harvard Law School a
few years ahead of E. P. Smith, but the latter was apparently the first native to
enter Harvard; Yale was much preferred.

96 Advertiser, Nov. 22, 1847.

97 Lewis G. Clark, ed., Literary Remains of the Late Wiltts Gaylord Clark
(New York, 1844), pp. i74~i75-

26 THE CITY

our admiration were the private dwellings, which
IE beauty are seldom equalled in our cities." m

A improvement in domestic comforts characterized the period.

"The population growth of the forties enabled builders

to catch up with the demand for houses, and while modest frame
cottages proved numerous, a goodly number of Greek Revival

and "Ornamental Gothic" villas graced the more desirable
streets* The eleven-room Elmwood Cottage of Captain Robert Harding,
built in the new Gothic style in a rural setting on Genesee Street at a
cost of |2,3oo 3 provided a striking contrast to Silas O. Smith s dignified
Woodside, erected in the popular Greek Revival fashion on Pittsford
Road (East Avenue) on the other side of town." More extensive than
either was Grove Place at the eastern end of Main Street, acquired
in 1839 by Samuel L. Selden, who paid $20,000 for the mansion and
its twenty-acre estate. Here the Ward and Selden families congregated
in a rambling homestead which slowly extended in several directions on
functional rather than stylistic lines, 100 Other imposing mansions or
villas occupied favored sites on the roads leading north and south on
both sides of the river and on Pittsford Road and Buffalo Street. 101

But most of the elegant residences appeared in the sheltered part of
the Third Ward, separated from the principal business district by the
Erie Canal. Charming post-Colonial houses alternated with the more
pretentious fagades of such Greek Revival mansions as that of Jonathan
Child on Washington Street. A skilled architect from New England,
Hugh Hastings, designed several of the classical mansions, including the
elegant Whittlesey residence opening on Fitzhugh Street. That street
as well as Sophia (Plymouth) and Washington, running parallel, Spring
and Troup at right angles, and Livingston Park overlooking the section,
provided a congenial center for culture and refinement. 103 Two elegant

08 E. R. Steele, A Summer Journey (New York, 1841), pp. 46-47; Sir Charles
Lyel, Travels in North America, I, 17. For an excellent discussion of dwelling
standards throughout pre-Civil War America, see Edgar W. Martin, The Standard
of living in 1860 (Chicago, 1944), pp. 83-172.

m Both are still standing in 1945, the first as a Spiritualist church and the latter
as the home of the Rochester Historical Society. Genesee Farmer, February, 1846,
p. 42-

1<M> Henry M. Ward, Memorials of a Grand Parent and Parents (Rochester,
1886), pp. 21-23; Elisabeth S. S. Eaton to Captain Eaton, Rochester, Dec. 2,
1839, Aug. 18, 26, 1846, E. S. S. Eaton Letters.

101 "Grove Place is decidedly delightful- Judge Chapin s place [on Caledonia
Square] is still more exquisitely beautiful" "The three or four places: Grove
Place* Mr. Smith s pkce, Mr. Chapin s & Lorimer Hill [the Freeman Clarke man
sion on Lake Avenue] are as inviting and lovely as the country affords any
where." E. S. S. Eaton to her husband, Rochester, Aug. 18, 26, 1846, E. S. S.
Eaton Letters.

1<r2 Walter H. Cassebeer, "Architecture in Rochester," R. H. S., Pub., XI, 290-
295; Charles F. Pond, "History of the Third Ward," R. H. S. 9 Pub., I, 71-81.

SOCIAL AND CULTURAL EXPRESSION 297

seminaries opened there during the period, and several of the principal
churches as well as the University stood only a few blocks distant. It
was in the Third Ward that a visitor of 1847 saw the "splendid man
sions" he found lacking in Buffalo, more preoccupied with trade. 108

Spacious as some of these houses appeared, they were generally over
flowing with residents. Large families proved the rule, so much so that
J. T. Andrews was provoked on one occasion^ when shouts from the
street disturbed Ms Sabbath rest, to record in his Weather Book that
"Rochester [is] terribly infested with children." 104 Indeed, 22 per cent
of the city s population fell between the ages of five and sixteen in 1845,
and men no longer outnumbered women. 105 Edwin Scrantom was glad in
April, 1844 (when six youngsters crowded Ms small house on Sophia
Street), for the opportunity to move into more spacious Willowbank
on the western edge of the city, three-fourths of a mile from the central
bridge. The good house and barn surrounded by one hundred fruit trees
on a lot an acre and a half in size cost him $2500, but the Scrantom
family had at last acquired an established position in the commu
nity. 10 *

A high rate of mortality, especially among infants, helped to keep
most families within bounds, though not without exerting a profound
influence upon the survivors, as the doleful and dripping verses of
Marcia Webster and other poets of the period reveal. 107 When the
mortality rate per 100 mounted from 1.98 in 1845 to 2.66 in 1847,
blame was placed on the abnormal prevalence of disease throughout
the country, a condition indicated by the advance of Boston s rate from
2.26 to 3.13 during the same period. Of the 737 deaths recorded by the
City Sexton in 1847, m t of a population of 28,000, those of three years
or less numbered 333. 10S The next year one editor observed "nine funerals
in the city one day last week, all of children under eight years of age." 109
Levi A. Ward, one of old Dr. Ward s tMrteen children, eleven of whom
reached maturity, saved only six of Ms own twelve children, while Edwin
Scrantom saved five out of ten. Little wonder the community took such
a sentimental interest in its lovely Mount Hope Cemetery. 110

103 New York Herald, Sept. 15, 1847.

104 J. T. Andrews, Weather Book, August, 1847.

105 j^ Y. Census (1845) . A century later only 16 per cent of the city s popula
tion in 1940 belonged to the 5 to 16 age group and women now definitely out
numbered men. Also see above, p. 137, note 3.

loe E. Scrantom, Diary, Apr. 4, 1844; W. A. Campbell, "A Chronicle of
Architecture and Architects in Rochester" (multigraphed paper, 1939) , Roch.
Hist. Soc. The present-day "Willobank" is the second on this site.

107 "A Tale of Mount Hope," by Marcia Webster, Raymond Scrapbook, p. 23,
also pp. 54, 59, 66, 74, 107; Rochester Gem, 1829-1843, passim.

IDS Raymond Scrapbook, p. 22. See also pp. 105-106, and note 20, p. 140.

109 Genesee Olio, Sept. 9, 1848.

110 Alexander Mackay, The Western World (London, 1850), HI, 112.

298 THE WATER-POWER CITY

WMe numerous diseases brought appalling hazards, an increasing
of practitioners straggled to check such ravages. The com
munity in i 44 contained thirty-one "practicing physicians" and four
teen dentists, several of whom enjoyed a wide reputation. Dr. John B.
Elwood, reputed to be "the best operator in the city/ successfully re
moved "a stone the size of a hen s egg from Mrs. HertelPs bladder in
% of an hour" in 183 7. m Equally noted were Dr. Edward G. Munn for
Ms deft work on the eye, Dr. W. W. Reid as an expert in adjusting dis
located hip bones, Dr. Horatio N. Ferm as a dental surgeon, and young
Dr. Edward Mott Moore as a careful student of the latest medical and
surgical discoveries. Dr. F. F. Backus, beginning to advance in years,
reported in 1849 on the 712 births he had assisted during the previous
seventeen years and, recalling an experiment with the use of ether many
years before, greeted the new methods for the safe use of anesthetics
with praise. 112

Though not as contentious as the city s eighty-four lawyers ("Every
lawyer seemed to be a judge," one observer reported, and bustled about
with "an air of defiance on his brow"), 113 the doctors could not always
agree. Those trained in the standard medical colleges, and therefore
entitled to display an M.D., were bitterly attacked by Dr. Justin Gates,
the local exponent of th Thompsonian or Botanic system. The average
M.D. killed twenty patients by bleeding and poisons before he learned
caution, Gates declared, while the followers of Thompson used only
vegetable remedies. Although the Rochester Medical Truth Tetter and
Monthly Family Journal of Health, issued by Gates in 1844, soon dis
appeared, the science of homeopathy enjoyed wide confidence for a time,
and the followers of the eclectic school, a new protest against traditional
medicine, established the Central Medical College at Rochester. 114 Each
of these groups had something to contribute, but much to learn, and the
same held true of Woodland Owen s Guide to the Preservation of the
Teeth, in which the use of a small brush with bristles in three rows, tooth
powder, and elbow grease was recommended. 115

Each year brought its additional conveniences for those who could

111 E. Scrantom, Diary, June 15, 1837; Schermerhorn Letters, Nos. 55, 60.

112 Betsy C. Comer, "A Century of Medicine in Rochester," R. H. S., Pub.,
Xin, 342-352; "Dr. William W. Reid," in Howard A. KeUy and Walter L.
Burrage, Dictionary of Amer. Medical Biography (New York, 1928), p. 1026;
"Dr. Edward Mott Moore," D. A. B., XIII, 119-120.

133 Mrs. CM. C. F.] Houston, Hesperos: Or Travels in the West (London, 1850),
I, 104.

114 Elisabeth S. S. Eaton to her husband, Aug. i, 18, 1846, E. S. S. Eaton
Letters; Betsy C. Corner, "Rochester s Early Medical School," R. H. S., Pub.,
VH, 141-152.

115 W. Owen, A Guide to the Preservation of the Teeth (Rochester, 1842) ;
H. J. Burkhart, "Centennial History of Dentistry in Rochester," R. H. S., Pub.,
XIH, 385-288, 294.

SOCIAL AND CULTURAL EXPRESSION 299

afford them. Private carriages increased in number, as the growing size
of the city sent new customers to the Cunningham factory, where an
elegant carriage could be had for $350 in cash, with possibly a small
allowance on an old rig. Additional rooms were frequently added or a
spacious veranda in the rear where the children could safely play in
winter. English, girls, much in demand as companions for a brood of
young children, could usually be found if a family agreed to keep one
from ten until eighteen. 11 Ornamental trees and box hedging, as well
as fruit trees and flowers, were becoming essential outdoor accessories,
while a visit to one of the local nurseries provided an agreeable spring
time chore. Sanitary wooden pumps replaced the open buckets in back
yard wells, and improved sewers decreased the cistern problem, but the
outdoor necessary remained, supplemented perhaps by the chamber
maid. Though washing machines appeared as the latest novelty in 1843,
that distinction went a few years later to Bates 7 Patent Chamber Shower
Bath. It was no longer necessary, the advertiser declared, to bathe in
a washtub in the kitchen, for the new shower bath could be set up in a
bedroom or parlor; already the patrons of Blossom s Hotel enjoyed this
convenience. 117

The standard of domestic comfort fell sharply with the arrival of
cold weather. The better homes, which had formerly boasted a fireplace
in each downstairs room, were in some cases bricking them shut, as the
new parlor stoves, or more rarely a hot-air furnace in the cellar proved
sufficient, though many clung to the traditional "blazing hearth," despite
the scorn of stove advertisements. With the price of wood rising from
two to five dollars a cord, closing the fireplaces, which consumed as much
as ten cords each during the winter, promised relief at the chopping
block, yet coal for the furnace proved no less expensive, costing five
dollars a ton in the late forties, 118 It was much simpler, J. M. Schermer-
horn decided, to take a suite at the Temperance House, where all of
these problems were solved for you, although that arrangement had its
disadvantages, as he discovered when the "Band of Music in the Ball
Room" continued until a late hour and with other distractions delayed
his retirement until eleven and sometimes even till midnight. 119

Most Rochesterians enjoyed few of these conveniences. The attractive
appearance of Rochester, described on one occasion as the "handsomest

116 Mrs. Silas EL Smith to Mrs. Freeman Clarke, Rochester, Mar. 29, 1837,
Clarke MSS, courtesy of Mrs. Buell Mills, Rochester; Schermerhorn Letters,
June 7, 1843.

117 J. T. Andrews, Weather Book, passim; New Genesee Farmer, May, 1840,
p. 69; Democrat, Sept. 20, 1843; Genesee Farmer, June, 1848, p. 161; Advertiser,
Mar. 26, 1846.

i* 8 New Genesee Farmer, October, 1840, p. 145; November, 1842, p. 173;
Andrews Weather Book, March, -1848.

119 Schermerhorn Letters, Nov. 30, Dec. 21, 1842; Jan. 17, 1843.

300 TEE WATER-POWER CITY

city in the Union, with two exceptions, New Haven and Richmond," **>
caused many to overlook its less seemly features. A small Negro quarter
was developing west of High Street, scarcely a stone s throw from the
elegant homes of the Third Ward where many of these folk found
employment. 121 Scattered old rookeries, rambling structures hastily
thrown up during boom years to house the increasing number of poor
folk, stood scattered about, neglected until the number of cholera
fatalities in 1848 exposed their wretched conditions. 122 Some of the
worst of these tenements were being cleared away, generally by fire,
as in the case of the so-called Dublin Castle in which seventy-five poor
Irish families had been crowded, 123 but the cheap two- or three-room
cottages on the outskirts, into which the poor were moving, while made
attractive enough on the outside by coats of white or yellow paint and
vegetable or flower gardens, provided meager quarters for the large
families of the day. One observer described many of the new houses
erected in 1842 as "noble structures of 16 feet square." *** Frequently
lacking a cellar or cistern and poorly plastered if at all, their advantages
over the log cabins of the past proved few indeed. 125 A Franklin stove
might provide more heat than the drafty fireplaces, and a lard lamp
better light than the traditional candle, 128 but no doubt it afforded great
consolation to be able to elect a president said to have been reared under
less favorable circumstances.

The contrasts between the three hundred pretentious residences and
the six thousand less substantial houses were possibly more striking
than other differences in domestic standards. One traveler found that
"provisions at Rochester are as good and plentiful as in any city in the
Union New York not excepted," while others commented on the
abundance of meats, fruit, and vegetables available in season. 127 The
bountiful breakfasts of pioneer days had given way to a lighter fare,
with hot cornbread as the staple, but other meals lost none of their
weight. Even on a fast day, J. T. Andrews noted that his housekeeper
served potatoes, fish, beefsteak, liver, bread and butter, pickles, pie and
cake. The favor shown by continental immigrants for fruit and vege
tables appeared a community hazard during the cholera epidemic, yet
the product of the many backyard gardens remained of large importance
to most families. A series of lectures by Sylvester Graham stimulated a

120 Raymond Scrapbook, p. 134.

121 Democrat, Aug. 27, 1834; N. Y. Census (1845), plate 27, i.
^Raymond Scrapbook, pp. 173, 228-229.

323 Samson |prapbook, No. 41, p. 63.

124 Advertiser, Mar. 15, 1842.

125 Workingman s Advocate, Feb. u, 28, 29, 1840.

126 Genesee Farmer, October, 1849 > May, 1850.

127 Houston, Hesperos, I, 108; New Genesee Farmer, August, September, Oc
tober, 1842, pp. 120, 136, 148. See also Martin, Standard of Living, pp. 11-82.

SOCIAL AND CULTURAL EXPRESSION 301

new interest in dietary matters, while the development of a commercial
ice industry made possible an advance in health standards, though the
effect on the average household was probably slight 128

The tables maintained by the leading hotels were popular among
residents and travelers alike. Grace Greenwood, who "love[d] to visit
Rochester/ though the absence of "old familiar faces" of her school
days proved depressing, stopped frequently at the Eagle Hotel, which
she described as a "home-like sort of a place" with a good table.
Schermerhorn found the fare at the Temperance House a bit too fine
for his taste. 129 Banqueting out generally provided the high point of any
and all celebrations, whether on Independence Day, the visit of a
celebrity, or the printers annual commemoration of Franklin s birthday.
A wide selection of a half-dozen roasts, an equal number of boiled or
broiled meats, oysters and fish in varied forms, a dozen pastries and
other desserts topped off with fruit enabled local printers to give due
honor to the "First American" in 1847. A year later the pioneer settlers
of Rochester, gathering to relive the scenes of the past, were not satis
fied until a selection of vegetables was added to the printers menu. 130

<

But "the principal charm of Rochester," said Alexander Mackay,
after describing the beauty of its gorge and the remarkable energy of
its commerce and industry, "is in its social circle, which is intellectual,
highly cultivated, hospitable, frank and warm hearted."- 1 ? 1 Horace
Greeley declared that "Rochester is the most republican city of our
State the least pampered by distinctions of class or prejudices of
sect." 132 Another observer noted "less show of expensive equipage and
foolish style of living in Rochester than in any other place of the size
within my knowledge." On further inquiry he learned that "the aristoc
racy, or the scrub nobility, were very limited," and that "the mechanics
and small tradesmen are ... the moving spirits of the city." 133

Rochester s social elite still functioned much as an enlarged family
circle, with its hospitality checked only by the facilities of the largest
mansions. The young folk kept a succession of gay parties running
through each January and February in the numerous big houses, and

^Advertiser, Sept. 15, 1849; Andrews Weather Book, April, 18475 E. Scrantom,
Diary, Jan. 3, 1840; Samson Scrapbook, No. 51, p. 27. Ice was generally regarded
as a household luxury prior to 1850, but found increased use in the brewing
industry.

129 Grace Greenwood, letter of Aug. i, 1849, Raymond Scrapbook, p. 132;
Schermerhorn Letters, Nov. 30, 1842.

130 Raymond Scrapbook, pp. 30, 71; Democrat, Dec. 3, 1840.

131 Mackay, The Western World, III, 113.

132 N. Y. Tribune (1849), Raymond Scrapbook, p. 137.

133 "Opinions of Rochester: 1848," Syracuse Star clipping, no date, Raymond
Scrapbook, p. 56.

3<>2 THE WATER-POWER CITY

no doubt the lists of guests if combined would have supplied a tentative
social register. The old custom of gathering at four in the afternoon
was giving way to the evening party which sometimes continued until
midnight, but the guests still attended as family delegations rather than
in couples. 1 4 If a promising young clerk, such as Cyrus F. Paine, earn
ing four hundred dollars a year, wished to court his boss s daughter, he
might escort her to midweek prayer service without offense, or they
might join the family in an apple-paring match or in a song f est around
the piano in the sitting room. On one occasion Cyrus confided to his
journal that he had "sat with EL in the parlor! 3 135 Young Paine was
benefiting from the recently adopted seven o clock closing hour.
Although agitation for this practice had started in 1841, when a Clerk s
Association argued that "that hour [9 P.M.] is altogether too late to
afford us the means to enter into the society of those whose restraining
influence would at once refine our manners and purify our hearts," yet
it was December, 1848, before the reform was achieved, and then only
for the winter months. 186

Less circumspect perhaps, but more full of zest, were the midwinter
balls of the military units and volunteer fire companies. Indeed these
festive occasions, usually held at the Eagle Hotel and sometimes number
ing as many as thirty dances, easily overshadowed the more exclusive
mansion parties. 137 . Third Ward daughters might be kept at home, but it
proved difficult to restrict the freedom of the young men. More than one
city father was finding the control of his sons a serious problem one
which a year at sea or in a distant academy did not solve. Mothers
could not always choose their daughters-in-law, and at least one parent,
a respected deacon of a leading church, was held blameworthy by a close
friend for not following "the Word of God s Truth" and applying the
rod when necessary j 188

The younger members of some of the leading families made one
dramatic effort in January, 1847, to reestablish their social ascendency
by a costume party at the home of Mrs. William EL Greenough, where
the elite gathered to the number of seventy-six. The gala affair prompted
two young and dashing newcomers hi Rochester, Leonard and Lawrence
Jerome, to bring out an amusing account in prose and verse of The
Fancy Party in which the costumes and the personalities were generously
puffed up. But the "unsoaped" had their spokesman as well when a
second pamphlet followed with a satirical account of The Great Upper-

134 Elisabeth S, S. Eaton to her husband, Rochester, Aug. 2, 1839, E - S. S. Eaton
Letters; Andrews Weather Book, January-February, 1846; January-February,
1847-

136 Cyrus F. Paine, Journal, MS in Roch. Hist. Soc.

136 Advertiser } Oct. i, 1841, Nov. 30, 1848.

187 Miscellaneous Programs and Invitations, MSS, Roch. Hist. Soc.

^Schennerhonx Letters, Dec. 21, 1842.

SOCIAL AND CULTURAL EXPRESSION 303

crust Party. Illustrated with a series of grotesque woodcuts, the second
and more facetious account burlesqued the show ? demonstrating that
Rochester had developed a lusty sense of humor and was fully able
to put its "scrub nobility" in its place. 1 9

Indeed, social activities were becoming more numerous and more
animated as the years advanced. Thaiiksglving remained a family day,
but New Year s Eve celebrations expanded into community affairs, with
scores of friends marching the rounds together, visiting the homes where
candle displays assured a cheery welcome. The liberal supply of
"champaigne" served at several houses in 1841 prompted the organiza
tion of a temperance party at a local hotel the next New Year s Eve,
with the invitation, extended to the public generally, signed by "Santa
Clans," who described himself as "the universal friend of children." 14
Christmas remained a quiet religious day, highlighted by a sermon and
a family feast. St. Nicholas was already filling the stockings of good
children, and the appearance of Rochester s first Christmas tree in

1840, erected i